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JOSEPH HALL,D.DJ 
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HALL'S 

SATIRES. 



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JOSEPH HALL, 






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SATIRES. 



BY 

JOSEPH HALL, 

AFTERWARDS BISHOP OF EXETER AND NORWICH. 

WITH THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE LATE 

REV. THOMAS WARTON. 



AND ADDITIONAL NOTES 

BY SAMUEL WELLER SINGER. 





" CHISWICK : 

^rtnuti fm ©. aityittingljam, 

FOR R. TR1PHOOK, OLD BOND STREET, LONDON. 
Bf DCCC XXIV. 



THE 

EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



When these Satires were shown to Pope at 
a late period of his poetical career, he was so 
sensible of their merit as to wish he had seen 
them sooner 1 . I doubt not that every reader 
who takes them up for the first time will be 
surprised that so much sterling good sense, 
such nervous language, and such masterly ver- 
sification should not have commanded more 
popularity. Yet nothing can be less true than 
Warton's remark, that Hall is better known as 
a poet than as a prelate or polemic. The Ser- 
mons and Meditations of the divine retained 



1 Warburton told Warton, that in a copy of Hall's 
Satires in Pope's library, the whole first satire of the 
sixth book was corrected in the margin, or interlined 
in Pope's own hand ; and that Pope had written at 
the head of that satire optima satira. 



Vi THE EDITOR S PREFACE. 

their popularity, while the youthful effusions 
of the poet possessed but limited fame, and 
were indeed almost unknown to any but anti- 
quarian poetical readers. This may in some 
measure be accounted for from the circum- 
stance of the obscurity which naturally attends 
upon satire ; as the follies which are castigated, 
and the fashionable vices which are held up to 
ridicule fade away, the allusions are not so 
easily understood by a later age, as by that 
which it was intended to correct. Hall has 
heightened this obscurity by imitating the ellip- 
tical manner of Persius and Juvenal ; but per- 
haps still more by throwing over his composi- 
tions the veil of antiquated words and phraseo- 
logy, which, like his friend Spenser, he seems 
to have studiously affected. Indeed, following 
an erroneous opinion, he imagined, that a satire 
must necessarily be e hard of conceit, and harsh 
of style,' he therefore thought proper to apo- 
logize for ' too much stooping to the low reach 
of the vulgar :' and in the Prologue to Book 
III. he finds it necessary to answer such cavil- 
lers as had blamed his plain speaking. 

Satire, as Warton observes, specifically so 
called, had not its rise among us until the latter 
end of Elizabeth's reign. For though the long 



THE EDITORS PREFACE. VI 1 

allegorical Vision of-Pier's Ploughman is inter- 
spersed with satirical delineations of vice and 
folly, satire was not its primary object. Other 
poems had been made the vehicle of satirical 
allusion, and Skelton's ribaldry long since had 
dealt out abuse and scurrility in profusion, but 
satire i in its dignified and moral sense,' and on 
the model of the ancients, had its rise, if not 
with the publication of Hall, at least in his 
time. He boldly claims the precedence — 

I first adventure, follow me who list, 
And be the second English satirist. 

But he was certainly anticipated by Thomas 
Lodge, whose Fig for Momus, published in 
1593, contained four Satires, as a specimen of 
' a whole centon already in his hands/ and 
several Epistles, in the manner of Horace. 
Donne, and Marston too, appear to have writ- 
ten about the same time, though posterior in 
the order of publication. What is more im- 
portant, however, if not the first, Hall may 
justly lay claim to be considered the best sa- 
tirist of his age, and when we remember that 
the writer was only twenty-three years old at 
the time of publication, we cannot but regret 



Vlll THE EDITOR S PREFACE. 

that graver studies should have so absorbed his 
life, as to give him neither leisure nor inclina- 
tion to renew his acquaintance with the Muse. 
That he was not unconscious of his power for 
higher flights appears in several passages of the 
following volume ; but especially in part of 
the Defiance to Envy, quoted by Warton ; 
where, apostrophizing his muse, he says — 



Would she but shade her tender brows with bay, 
That now lie bare in careless wilful rage; 
And trance herself in that sweet ecstasy, 
That rouseth drooping thoughts of bashful age; 
Though now those bays, and that aspired thought, 
In careless rage she sets at worse than nought. 

Or would we loose her plumy pinion, 

Manacled long with bonds of modest fear: 

Soon might she have those kestrels proud outgone, 

Whose flighty wings are dew'd with wetter air. 

***** *** * 



Or scour the rusted swords of Elvish knights, 
Bathed in Pagan blood ; or sheath them new 
In misty moral types; or tell their fights, 
Who mighty giants, or who monsters slew. 

And by some strange enchanted spear and shield, 
Yanquish'd their foe, and won the doubtful field. 



THE EDITORS PREFACE. IX 

May be she might in stately stanzas frame 
Stories of ladies and adventurous knights, 
To raise her silent and inglorious name 
Unto a reachless pitch of praise's height. 
And somewhat say, as more unworthy done, 
Worthy of brass, and hoary marble stone. 

In the controversy about episcopacy and church 
discipline Hall took an active part, and replied 
to the celebrated book called Smectymnus, 
without considering consequences, when such 
courage was as hazardous as it was honourable. 
This called down upon him the anger and ani- 
madversion of Milton, who suffered his zeal to 
master his reason ; and who ' goes out of his 
svay to attack these satires, a juvenile produc- 
tion of his dignified adversary, and under every 
consideration alien to the dispute.' What his 
strictures want in critical acumen he makes up 
by sarcastic reflection, and ventures to misquote 
and misunderstand the passage above cited, 
which, under other circumstances, would un- 
doubtedly have excited in his mind more noble 
and kindred feelings. The sarcasm may now 
be safely quoted, as, like all perversions of 
truth for party purposes, it reflects more dis- 
credit upon the writer than upon the person 
attacked. 
u Lighting upon this title of ' Toothless Sa- 

a 3 



X THE EDITORS PREFACE. 

tyrs/ I will not conceal ye what I thought, 
readers, that sure this must be some sucking 
satyr, who might have done better to have used 
his coral, and made an end of breeding, ere he 
took upon him to wield a satyr's whip. But 
when I heard him talk of scouring the shields 
of elvish knights, do not blame me if I changed 
my thought, and concluded him some despe- 
rate cutler. But why his scornful Muse could 
ne'er abide, zoith tragic shoes her ankles for to 
hide j the pace of the verse told me her maw- 
kin knuckles were never shapen to that royal 
business. And turning by chance to the sixth 
[seventh] satire of his second book, I was con- 
firmed: where having begun loftily in Heaven's 
universal alphabet, he falls down to that wretch- 
ed poorness and frigidity as to talk of Bridge 
Street in Heaven, and the ostler of Heaven. 
And there wanting other matter to catch him a 
heat (for certain he was on the frozen zone 
miserably benumbed), with thoughts lower than 
any beadle's, betakes him to whip the sign- 
posts of Cambridge alehouses, the ordinary 
subject of freshmen's tales, and in a strain as 
pitiful. Which for him, who would be counted 
the first English satyrist, to abase himself to, 
who might have learned better among the Latin 
and Italian satyrists, and, in our own tongue, 



THE EDITORS PREFACE. Xi 

from the Vision and Creede of Pierce Plow- 
man, besides others before him, manifested a 
presumptuous undertaking with weak and un- 
examined shoulders. For a satire is, as it were, 
born out of a tragedy, so ought to resemble 
his parentage, to strike high, and adventure 
dangerously at the most eminent vices among 
the greatest persons, and not creep into every 
blind taphouse that fears a constable more than 
a satire. But that such a poem should be 
toothless I still affirm it to be a bull, taking 
away the essence of what it calls itself. For 
if it bite neither the persons nor the vices, how 
is it a satyr I And if it bite either, how is it 
toothless i So that toothless satires are as if 
he had said toothless teeth V 

The Satires of Hall issued from the press in 
1597, and it should appear that the first three 
books were published separately under the title 
of " Virgidemiarum 3 . Sixe Bookes. First 
three Bookes of Toothlesse Satyrs. 1. Poeti- 
call. 2. Academicall. 3. Morall. London, 



1 Apology for Smectymnus, Milton's Prose Works, 
vol. i. p. 186, 1698, fol. 

3 By Virgidemia, an uncouth and uncommon 
word, we are to understand a Gathering or Harvest of 
Rods, in reference to the nature of the subject. VV. 



Xll THE EDITOR S PREFACE. 

printed by Thomas Creed, for Robert Dexter, 
1597. l6mo." This publication is not men- 
tioned in the Register of the Stationer's Com- 
pany. In the next year three more books ap- 
peared, entitled, " Virgidemiarum, The three 
last Bookes of Ryting Satyres. London, print- 
ed by Richard Bradock, for Robert Dexter, 
1598/' in the same size and type. Both parts 
were again reprinted in 1599 and 1602. The 
publication appears to have been very popular, 
but was ordered to be stayed at the press by 
the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of 
London; and such copies as could be found 
were to "bee presentlye broughte to the Bp. 
of London to be burnte." Meres, in his Wits' 
Treasurie, 1598, mentions Hall, with Marston 
and others, celebrated for satiric compositions. 
Marston, who appears to have been Hall's 
poetical rival at Cambridge, levels a satire en- 
titled " Reactio" (printed with his Pigmalion's 
Image, 1598), at Hall; many of whose lines he 
paraphrases ; for example : 

But come, fond braggart, crown thy brows with bays, 

Intrance thyself in thy sweet ecstasy. 

Come, manumit thy plumy pinion, 

And scower the sword of Elvish champion, 

Or else vouchsafe to breathe in wax-bound quill, 

And deign our longing ears with music fill ; 



THE EDITOR S PREFACE. Xlll 

Or let us see thee some such stanzas frame, 
That thou mayst raise thy vile inglorious name. 
Summon the Nymphs and Driades to bring 
Some rare invention, whilst thou dost sing 
So sweet, that thou mayst shoulder from above 
The Eagle from the stairs of friendly Jove, 
And lead sad Pluto captive with thy song, 
Gracing thyself that art obscur'd too long. 
Come, somewhat say (but hang me when 'tis done), 
Worthy of brass and hoary marble stone. 
Speak, ye attentive swains, that heard him never. 
Will not his pastorals endure for ever^ 



And so on to the end in this strain. The cause 
of the quarrel between Hall and Marston is 
not exactly known, but in the tenth satire of 
the Scourge of \ illanie, 1598, Marston again 
returns to the charge, and, by some expressions, 
I judge that he was angry at being forestalled 
by the publication of Hall's Satires; he also 
accuses him of having caused an epigram to be 
pasted to the latter page of every Pigmalion 
that came to the stationers of Cambridge. 

" The Satires of Hall (says Warton), are 
marked with a classical precision to which 
English poetry had yet rarely attained. They 
are replete with animation of style and senti- 
ment. The indignation of the satirist is al- 
ways the result of good sense. Nor are the 



XIV THE EDITORS PREFACE. 

thorns of severe invective unmixed with the 
flowers of pure poetry. The characters are 
delineated with strong and lively colouring, and 
their discriminations are touched with the mas- 
terly traces of genuine humour. The versifi- 
cation is equally energetic and elegant, and 
the fabric of the couplets approaches to the 
modern standard. It is no inconsiderable 
proof of a genius predominating over the gene- 
ral taste of an age when every preacher was a 
punster, to have written verses, where laughter 
was to be raised, and the reader to be enter- 
tained with sallies of pleasantry, without quib- 
bles and conceits. His chief fault is obscu- 
rity, arising from a remote phraseology, con- 
strained combinations, unfamiliar allusions, 
elliptical apostrophes, and abruptness of ex- 
pression. Perhaps some will think that his 
manner betrays too much of the laborious ex- 
actness and pedantic anxiety of the scholar and 
the student. — Hall's acknowledged patterns 
are Juvenal and Persius, not without some 
touches of the urbanity of Horace 4 . His pa- 

* The reader's attention is requested to HalPs 
Postscript, now placed as a Preface to his Satires, 
in which he enumerates the difficulties to be sur- 
mounted in his undertaking, and says that, beside 



THE EDITOR S PREFACE. XV 

rodies of these poets, or rather his adaptations 
of ancient to modern manners, a mode of imi- 
tation not unhappily practised by Oldham, 
Rochester, and Pope, discover great facility 
and dexterity of invention. The moral gra- 
vity and the censorial declamation of Juvenal 
he frequently enlivens with a train of more re- 
fined reflection, or adorns with a novelty and 
variety of images." 

I shall add Warton's parallel of Hall and 
Marston. "There is a carelessness and laxity 
in Marston's versification, but there is a free- 
dom and facility which Hall has too frequently 
missed, by labouring to confine the sense to 
the couplet. Hall's measures are more musi- 
cal, not because the music of verse consists in 
uniformity of pause, and regularity of cadence. 
Hall had a correcter ear; and his lines have a 
tuneful strength, in proportion as his language 
is more polished, his phraseology more select, 
and his structure more studied. Hall's mean- 
ing, among other reasons, is not so soon appre- 
hended on account of his compression both in 
sentiment and diction. Marston is more per- 

his ancient models, he was unacquainted with any 
other compositions of the same kind, except the 
Satires of Ariosto, and one base French satire. 



XVI THE EDITOR S PREFACE* 

spicuous, as he thinks less and writes hastily. 
Hall is superior in penetration, accurate con- 
ception of character, acuteness of reflection, 
and the accumulation of thoughts and images. 
Hall has more humour, Marston more acri- 
mony. Hall often draws his materials from 
books, and the diligent perusal of other satirists, 
Marston from real life. Yet Hall has a larger 
variety of characters. He possessed the talent 
of borrowing with address, and of giving origi- 
nality to his copies. On the whole, Hall is 
more elegant, exact, and elaborate." After ob- 
serving that Marston's Satires are polluted with 
the impurities of the brothel, and that they 
were condemned to the same flame, and by 
the same authority, as those of Hall, he ob- 
serves, that " Hall deserved a milder sentence. 
He exposes vice, not in the wantonness of de- 
scription, but with the reserve of a cautious 
yet lively moralist. Perhaps every censurer 
of obscenity does some harm by turning the 
attention to an immodest object. But this 
effect is to be counteracted by the force and 
propriety of his reproof, by showing the perni- 
cious consequences of voluptuous excesses, by 
suggesting motives to an opposite conduct, 
and by making the picture disgustful by dashes 
of deformity. When vice is led forth to be 



THE EDITOR S PREFACE. XV11 

sacrificed at the shrine of virtue, the victim 
should not be too richly dressed." 

"In the point, volubility, and vigour of Hall's 
numbers (says Mr. Campbell), we might fre- 
quently imagine ourselves perusing Dry den," 
This may be exemplified in the harmony and 
picturesqueness of the description of a magni- 
ficent rural mansion, which the traveller ap^ 
proaches in the hopes of reaching the seat of 
ancient hospitality, but finds it deserted by its 
selfish owner 5 . His satires are neither cramped 
by personal hostility, nor spun out to vague 
declamations on vice, but give the form and 
pressure of the times exhibited in the faults 
of coeval literature, and in the foppery or sor- 
did traits of prevailing manners. The age was 
undoubtedly fertile in eccentricity. His pic- 
ture of its literature may, at first view, appear 

5 See Sat, ii. B. v. " Beat the broad gates a goodly 
hollow sound," &c. Mr. C. adds, "The Satire which 
I think contains the most vigorous and musical 
couplets is the first of Book III, beginning, ' Time 
was, and that was term'd the time of gold/ I pre- 
ferred, however, the insertion of others, as they are 
more descriptive of English manners than the fanci- 
ful praises of the golden age, which that satire con- 
tains." 

Specimens of the Brit. Poets, Vol. II. p. 257. 



XV111 THE EDITOR S PREFACE. 

to be overcharged .with severity, accustomed 
as we are to associate a general idea of excel- 
lence with the period of Elizabeth ; but when 
Hall wrote there was not a great poet firmly 
established in the language except Spenser, and 
on him he has bestowed ample applause." 

With regard to Shakspeare, the reader will 
observe a passage in the first satire, where the 
poet says : 

Trumpet and reeds and socks and buskins fine, 
I them bequeath, whose statues, wand'ring twine 
Of ivy mix'd with bays, circlen around, 
Their living temples likewise laurel bound. 

Though Warton imagines that the classic poets 
are here meant, the phrase living temples un- 
equivocally makes the passage allusive to his. 
contemporaries, among whom Meres, in 1593, 
distinguishes Shakspeare, as the u most excellent 
both for tragedy and comedy, and his fine filed 
phrase." 

I have preferred letting this excellent person 
relate some specialities of his own life, to pre- 
fixing an imperfect biographical memoir ; and 
in so doing I look to have the approbation of 
all persons of true taste. This interesting 
piece of auto-biography will remind the reader 
of one of our most eminent literary characters, 



THE EDITOR S PREFACE. XIX 

whose satires, and subsequent labours, have 
highly benefited his country ; and whose valu- 
able life has been devoted, like that of Bishop 
Hall, to the public good, in stemming the pro- 
gress of pernicious innovations, literary, poli- 
tical, and religious ; happily for us with better 
success. > 

Hall's life was checquered, and the shadowy 
predominates over the brighter parts of the 
picture. In his youth he had to struggle with 
poverty, and with submission to the capricious 
will of a penurious patron ; and though for a 
time he enjoyed the sun light of court favour, 
the evening of his life was passed in privation, 
obscurity, and amid unmerited persecution; de- 
prived of comforts when increasing years and 
infirmities would render the trial more severe ; 
living to see his cathedral converted into a bar- 
rack, and his palace into an alehouse: he bore 
the accumulated evils with the constancy of a 
martyr; and one of his friends exclaims, " we 
have heard of the patience of Job, but never 
saw a fairer copy of it than was in this man." 
His charity was unbounded, and even out of 
the pittance which was allowed him by the par- 
liament in his retreat at Heigham, he contrived 
to spare no inconsiderable portion for charita- 
ble purposes. He did not forget the poor even 
in his will, though the circumstances in which 



XX THE EDITOR S PREFACE. 

he left his family would have justified the omis- 
sion. He desired to be buried privately, and 
could hardly be prevailed on to allow a funeral 
sermon; but his friend, John Whitefoote, rector 
of Heigham, did pronounce one, which was af- 
terwards published, in which he tells us, " He 
was noted for a singular wit from his youth : a 
most acute rhetorician, and an elegant poet. 
He understood many tongues ; and in the rhe- 
toric of his own he was second to none that 
lived in his time." 

To use the words of his old biographer, u his 
days were few and evil, in Jacob's comparative 
sense ; and yet many and good, for he died in 
the 82d year of his age, on the 8th of Septem- 
ber, 1656, full of days and full of good works." 

The style of his prose writings is terse and 
even elegant, though with something of anti- 
thetical quaintness. Seneca seems to have 
been his model. His learning was extensive, 
but tempered by sound judgment, deep pene- 
tration into the human character, and consum- 
mate knowledge of the world, which was de- 
rived from commerce with courts and foreign 
travel. His " Mundus Alter et Idem" is a 
satirical fiction, in which, under the pretence of 
describing an unknown new found region, he 
characterizes the vices of existing nations : — 
and in his " Quo Vaclis? or a Censure of Travel" 



THE EDITOR S PREFACE. XXi 

are many pertinent reflections upon manners 
and the conduct of life, which may still be pe- 
rused with advantage. Warton has remarked, 
that " the writer of the Satires is perceptible in 
some of his gravest polemical or scriptural 
treatises, which are perpetually interspersed 
with excursive illustrations, familiar allusions, 
and observations on life. His Character- 
ismes of Vertues and Vices are a lively 
and sensible set of Moral Essays, also contain- 
ing traces of the Satires.'' 

Hall has the merit of being the first who 
published epistolary compositions in his native 
tongue. Ascham had, indeed, put forth a vo- 
lume of Latin Letters ; and the Italians, Spa- 
niards, and French had many collections of the 
kind ; but this familiar species of composition 
was then a novelty in our literature ; and he 
thus expresses his claim to the invention in his 
dedication to Prince Henry: — "Further, which 
these times account not the least praise, your 
Grace shall herein perceive a new fashion of 
discourse by Epistles ; new to our language, 
usual to all others : and so (as novelty is never 
without plea of use), more free, more familiar. 
Thus we do but talk with our friends by our, 
pen, and express ourselves no whit less easily ; 
somewhat more digestedly." 



XX11 THE EDITORS PREFACE. 

In presenting the poetical reader with a new 
edition of a work which an excellent judge 
observes " must even now be considered as a 
model of elegance/' some diligence has been 
used to make it worthy his acceptance. The 
illustrations of the late Mr. Thomas Warton, 
in the fragment of the fourth volume of his 
History of Poetry, have been dispersed as notes 
on the passages to which they refer, marked 
with the initial W ; and additional explanations 
of the most difficult words and passages added 
by the present writer. The text has been care- 
fully collated with the two earliest editions, 
and many errors, which had occurred from the 
inattention or want of skill of the editor of that 
printed at Oxford in 1753, have been correct- 
ed. The orthography has been modernized, 
with a proper attention to the preservation 
of the archaisms which Hall in common with 
Spenser affected. To the Satires have been 
added the few scattered poetical remains of the 
author, and a Glossarial Index. 

Box Hill, 
February 6ih, 1824. 



OBSERVATIONS 

OF SOME 

SPECIALITIES OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE 

IN THE 

LIFE OF JOSEPH HALL, 

BISHOP OF NORWICH. 

Written fcoitf> J)ts oton lantt. 



SOME SPECIALITIES 



LIFE OF JOSEPH HALL. 



Not out of a vain affectation of my own glory, 
which I know how little it can avail me when I 
am gone hence; but out of a sincere desire to 
give glory to my God (whose wonderful Provi- 
dence I have noted in all my ways), [I] have re- 
corded some remarkable passages of my fore- 
past life : what I have done is worthy of nothing 
but silence and forgetfulness ; but what God 
hath done for me is worthy of everlasting and 
thankful memory. 

I was born July 1, 1574, at five of the clock 
in the morning, in Bristow Park, within the parish 
of Ashby-de-la-Zoueh, a town in Leicestershire, 
of honest and well allowed parentage : my father 
was an officer under that truly honourable and 
religious Henry Earl of Huntingdon, President 
of the North, and under him had the government 
of that market town ; wherein the chief seat of 

b 



XXVI THE LIFE OF 

that earldom is placed. My mother Winifride, 
of the house of the Bambridges, was a woman of 
that rare sanctity that (were it not for my interest in 
nature), I durst say, that neither Aleth, the mother 
of that just Honour, of Clareval ; nor Monica, nor 
any other of those pious matrons anciently famous 
for devotion, need to disdain her admittance to 
comparison. She was continually exercised with 
the affliction of a weak body, and of a wounded 
spirit, the agonies whereof, as she would oft re- 
count with much passion, professing that the 
greatest bodily sicknesses were but flea bites to 
those scorpions; so from them all, at last, she 
found a happy and comfortable deliverance, and 
that not without a more than ordinary hand of 
God. For on a time, being in great distress of 
conscience, she thought, in her dream, there 
stood by her a grave personage, in the gown and 
other habits of a physician, who inquiring of her 
estate, and receiving a sad and querulous answer 
from her, took her by the hand, and bade her be 
of good comfort, for this should be the last fit 
that ever she should feel of this kind. Whereto 
she seemed to answer, that upon that condition 
she would well be content, for the time, with that 
or any other torment. Reply was made to her, as 
she thought, with a redoubled assurance of that 
happy issue of this her last trial; whereat she 
began to conceive an unspeakable joy; which 



BISHOP HALL. XXV11 

yet upon her awaking left her more disconsolate, 
as then conceiting her happiness imaginary, her 
misery real; when the very same day she was 
visited by the reverend and (in his time) famous 
divine, Mr. Anthony Gilby, under whose minis- 
try she lived ; who upon the relation of this her 
pleasing vision, and the contrary effects it had in 
her, began to persuade her, that dream was no 
other than divine, and that she had good reason 
to think that gracious premonition was sent her 
from God himself, who, though ordinarily he 
keeps the common road of his proceedings, yet 
sometimes, in the distresses of his servants, he 
goes unusual ways to their relief. Hereupon she 
began to take heart, and by good counsel and her 
fervent prayer, found that happy prediction veri- 
fied to her, and upon all occasions in the remain- 
der of her life was ready to magnify the mercy of 
her God in so sensible a deliverance. What 
with the trial of both these hands of God, so had 
she profited in the school of Christ, that it was 
hard for any friend to come from her discourse 
no whit holier. How often have I blessed the 
memory of those divine passages of experimental 
divinity which I have heard from her mouth ! 
what day did she pass without a large task of 
private devotion, whence she would still come 
forth with a countenance of undissembled morti- 
fication. Never any lips have read to me such 

b 2 



XXVlll THE LIFE OF 

feeling lectures of piety; neither have I known 
any soul that more accurately practised them than 
her own. Temptations, desertions, and spiritual 
comforts were her usual theme. Shortly, for I 
can hardly take off my pen from so exemplary a 
subject, her life and death were saintlike. 

My parents had, from mine infancy, devoted 
me to the sacred calling, whereto, by the bless- 
ing of God, I have seasonably attained. For 
this cause I was trained up in the public school 
of the place. After I had spent some years (not 
altogether indiligently) under the ferule of such 
masters as the place afforded, and had near at- 
tained to some competent ripeness for the univer- 
sity, my schoolmaster being a great admirer of 
one Mr. Pelset, who was then lately come from 
Cambridge, to be the public preacher of Leices- 
ter (a man very eminent in those times for the 
fame of his learning, but especially for his sacred 
oratory), persuaded my father, that if I might 
have my education under so excellent and com- 
plete a divine, it might be both a nearer and easier 
way to his purposed end than by an academical 
institution. The motion sounded well in my fa- 
ther's ears, and carried fair probabilities ; neither 
was it other than forecompacted betwixt my 
schoolmaster and Mr. Pelset, so as on both sides 
it was entertained with great forwardness. 

The gentleman, upon essay taken of my fitness 



BISHOP HALL. XXIX 

for the use of his studies, undertakes, within one 
seven years, to send me forth no less furnished 
with arts, languages, and grounds of theorical 
divinity than the carefulest tutor in the strictest 
college of either university ; which that he might 
assuredly perform, to prevent the danger of any 
mutable thoughts in my parents or myself, he 
desired mutual bonds to be drawn betwixt us. 
The great charge of my father (whom it pleased 
God to bless with twelve children) made him 
the more apt to yield to so likely a project for a 
younger son there ; and now were all the hopes 
of my future life upon blasting; the indentures 
were preparing, the time was set, my suits were 
addressed for the journey : what was the issue ? 
O God, thy providence made and found it; thou 
knowest how sincerely and heartily, in those my 
young years 1 , I did cast myself upon thy hands ; 
with what faithful resolution I did, in this parti- 
cular occasion, resign myself over to thy dispo- 
sition, earnestly begging of thee in my fervent 
prayers to order all things to the best, and con- 
fidently waiting upon thy will for the event : 
certainly, never did I in all my life more clearly 
roll myself upon thy Divine Providence than I 
did in this business ; and it succeeded accord- 
ingly. It fell out, at this time, that my elder 
brother, having some occasions to journey unto 

1 Anno ^Etatis 15. 



XXX THE LIFE OF 

Cambridge, was kindly entertained there by Mr. 
Nath. Gilby, Fellow of Emanuel College, who, 
for that he was born in the same town with me, 
and had conceived some good opinion of my 
aptness to learning, inquired diligently concern- 
ing me, and hearing of the diversion of my fa- 
ther's purposes from the university, importunately 
dissuaded from that new course, professing to 
pity the loss of so good hopes. My brother, 
partly moved with his words, and partly won by 
his own eyes to a great love and reverence of an 
academical life, returning home, fell upon his 
knees to my father, and after the report of Mr. 
Gilby's words and his own admiration of the 
place, earnestly besought him that he would be 
pleased to alter that so prejudicial a resolution, 
that he would not suffer my hopes to be drowned 
in a shallow country channel, but that he would 
revive his first purposes for Cambridge ; adding, 
in the zeal of his love, that if the chargeableness 
of that course were the hinderance, he did there 
humbly beseech him rather to sell some part of 
that land which himself should in course of Na- 
ture inherit, than to abridge me of that happy 
means to perfect my education. 

No sooner had he spoken those words than 
my father no less passionately condescended, 
not without a vehement protestation, that what- 
soever it might cost him, I should (God willing) 
be sent to the university; neither were those 



BISHOP HALL. XXXI 

words sooner out of his lips than there was a 
messenger from Mr. Pelset knocking at the door, 
to call me to that fairer bondage, signifying, that 
the next day he expected me with a full dispatch 
of all that business. To whom my father replied, 
that he came some minutes too late, that he had 
now otherwise determined of me, and with a re- 
spective message of thanks to the master, sent 
the man home empty, leaving me full of the tears 
of joy for so happy a change. Indeed, I had been 
but lost if that project had succeeded, as it well 
appeared in the experience of him who suc- 
ceeded in that room which was by me thus un- 
expectedly forsaken. O God, how was I then 
taken up with a thankful acknowledgment and 
joyful admiration of thy gracious Providence over 
me. And now I lived in the expectation of Cam- 
bridge; whither ere long I happily came, under 
Mr. Gilby's tuition, together with my worthy 
friend Mr. Hugh Cholmley, who, as we had been 
partners of one lesson from our cradles, so were 
we now for many years partners of one bed. My 
two first years were necessarily chargeable above 
the proportion of my father's power, whose not 
very large cistern was to feed many pipes besides 
mine. His weariness of expense was wrought 
upon by the counsel of some unwise friends, who 
persuaded him to fasten me upon that school as 
master, whereof I was lately a scholar. Now 
was I fetched home, with a heavy heart, and 



XXXil THE LIFE OF 

now this second time had mine hopes been nipped 
in the blossom, had not God raised me up an un- 
hoped benefactor, Mr. Edmund Sleigh, of Derby 
(whose pious memory I have cause ever to love 
and reverence). Out of no other relation to me, 
save that he married my aunt, pitying my too 
apparent dejectedness, he voluntary urged and 
solicited my father for my return to the univer- 
sity, and offered freely to contribute the one half 
of my maintenance there till I should attain to the 
degree of Master of Arts, which he no less really 
and lovingly performed. The condition was 
gladly accepted, thither was I sent back with joy 
enough, and ere long chosen scholar of that strict 
and well ordered college. By that time I had 
spent six years there : now the third year of my 
bachelorship should at once both make an end of 
my maintenance, and, in respect of standing, give 
me a capacity of farther preferment in that house, 
were it not that my country excluded me, for our 
statute allowed but one of a shire to be Fellow 
there, and my tutor being of the same town with 
me, must therefore necessarily hold me out. 
But, O my God, how strangely did thy gracious 
Providence fetch this business about! I was 
now entertaining motions of remove; a place 
was offered me in the island of Guernsey, which 
I had in speech and chase ; it fell out that the 
father of my loving chamberfellow, Mr. Cholm- 
ley, a gentleman that had likewise dependence 



BISHOP HALL. XXXltt 

upon the most noble Henry Earl of Huntingdon, 
having occasion to go to York unto that his ho* 
nourable lord, fell, into some mention of me. 
That good Earl (who well esteemed my father's 
service), having belikely heard some better words 
of me than I could deserve, made earnest inquiry 
after me, what were my courses ; what my hopes ; 
and hearing of the likelihood of my removal, pro- 
fessed much dislike of it ; not without some vehe- 
mence, demanding why I was not chosen Fellow 
of that college wherein, by report, I received 
such approbation? Answer was returned, that 
my country debarred me ; which being filled with 
my tutor, whom his lordship well knew, could 
not, by the statute, admit a second. The earl 
presently replied, that if that were the hinderance, 
he would soon take order to remove it : where- 
upon his lordship presently sends for my tutor, 
Mr. Gilby, unto York, and with proffer of large 
conditions of the chaplainship in his house, and as- 
sured promises of better provisions, drew him to 
relinquish his place in the college to a free elec- 
tion. No sooner was his assent signified, than 
the days were set for the public (and, indeed, 
exquisite) examination of the competitors. By 
that time two days of the three allotted to this 
trial were passed, certain news came to us of the 
inexpected death of that incomparably religious 
and noble Earl of Huntingdon, by whose loss my 
then disappointed tutor must necessarily be left 

b 3 



XXXIV THE LIFE OF 

to the wide world unprovided for. Upon notice 
thereof I presently repaired to the master of the 
college, Mr. Dr. Chaderton, and besought him 
to render that hard condition to which my good 
tutor must needs be driven if the election pro- 
ceeded ; to stay any further progress in that bu- 
siness, and to leave me to my own good hopes 
wheresoever, whose youth exposed me both to 
less needs and more opportunities of provision. 
Answer was made me, that the place was pro- 
nounced void however, and therefore that my 
tutor was divested of all possibility of remedy, 
and must wait upon the Providence of God for 
his disposing elsewhere, and the election must 
necessarily proceed the day following. Then 
was I, with a cheerful unanimity, chosen into 
that society which, if it had any equals, I dare 
say had none beyond it, for good order, studious 
carriage, strict government, austere piety ; in which 
I spent six or seven years more with such con- 
tentment as the rest of my life hath in vain striven 
to yield. Now was I called to public disputa- 
tions often, with no ill success ; for never durst I 
appear in any of those exercises of scholarship, 
till I had from my knees looked up to Heaven 
for a blessing, and renewed my actual depen- 
dence upon that Divine hand. In this while two 
years together was I chosen to the rhetoric lec- 
ture in the public school, where I was encou- 
raged with a sufficient frequence of auditors ; but 



BISHOP HALL, XXXV 

finding that well applauded work somewhat out 
of my way, not without a secret blame of myself 
for so much excursion, I fairly gave up that task 
in the midst of those poor acclamations to a wor- 
thy successor, Mr. Dr. Dodd, and betook myself 
to those serious studies which might fit me for 
that high calling whereunto I was destined. 
Wherein after I had carefully bestowed myself 
for a time, I took the boldness to enter into sacred 
orders ; the honour whereof having once attained, 
I was no niggard of that talent which my God 
had entrusted to me, preaching often as occa- 
sion was offered, both in country villages abroad, 
and at home in the most awful auditory of the 
university. And now I did but wait where and 
how it would please my God to employ me. 
There was at that time a most famous school 
erected at Tiverton in Devon, and endowed 
with a very large pension, whose goodly fabric 
was answerable to the reported maintenance : the 
care whereof was, by the rich and bountiful foun- 
der, Mr. Blundel, cast principally upon the then 
Lord Chief Justice Popham. That faithful ob- 
server having great interest in the master of our 
house, Dr. Chaderton, moved him earnestly to 
commend some able, learned, and discreet go- 
vernor to that weighty charge, whose action 
would not need to be so much as his oversight. 
It pleased our master, out of his good opinion, 
to tender this condition unto me, assuring me of 



XXXVI THE LIFE OF 

no small advantages, and no great toil, since it 
was intended the main load of the work should 
lie upon other shoulders, I apprehended the mo- 
tion worth the entertaining. In that severe so- 
ciety our times were stinted ; neither was it wise 
or safe to refuse good offers. Mr. Dr. Chader- 
ton carried me to London, and there presented 
me to the lord chief justice with much testimony 
of approbation : the judge seemed well apaid for 
the choice ; I promised acceptance, he the strength 
of his favour. No sooner had I parted from the 
judge than in the street a messenger presented 
me with a letter from the right virtuous and wor- 
thy lady (of dear and happy memory), the lady 
Drury, of Suffolk, tendering the rectory of her 
Halsted, then newly void, and very earnestly 
desiring me to accept of it. Dr. <3haderton ob- 
serving in me some change of countenance, asked 
me what the matter might be. I told him the 
errand, and delivered him the letter, beseeching 
his advice ; which, when he had read, Sir (quoth 
I), methinks God pulls me by the sleeve, and tells 
me it is his will I should rather go to the east than 
to the west. Nay (he answered), I should rather 
think that God would have you go westward, for 
that he hath contrived your engagement before 
the tender of this letter, which therefore, coming 
too late, may receive a fair and easy answer. 
To this I besought him to pardon my dissent, 
adding, that I well knew that divinity was the 



BISHOP HALL. XXXV11 

end whereto I was destined by my parents, which 
I had so constantly proposed to myself, that I 
never meant other than to pass through this wes- 
tern school to it ; but I saw that God, who found 
me ready to go the further way about, now called 
me the nearest and directest way to that sacred 
end. The good man could no further oppose, 
but only pleaded the distaste which would here- 
upon be justly taken by the lord chief justice, 
whom I undertook fully to satisfy ; which I did 
with no great difficulty, commending to his lord- 
ship in my room, my old friend and chamberf el- 
low, Mr. Cholmley, who finding an answerable 
acceptance, disposed himself to the place : so as 
we two, who came to the university, now must 
leave it at once. Having then fixed my foot in 
Halsted, I found there a dangerous opposite to 
the success of my ministry, a witty and bold 
atheist, one Mr. Lilly, who, by reason of his tra- 
vels and abilities of discourse and behaviour, had 
so deeply insinuated himself into my patron, Sir 
Robert Drury, that there was small hopes (dur- 
ing his entireness) for me to work any good upon 
that noble patron of mine, who, by the suggestion 
of this wicked detractor, was set off from me be- 
fore he knew me. Hereupon (I confess) finding 
the obdurateness and hopeless condition of that 
man, I bent my prayers against him, beseeching 
God daily, that he would be pleased to remove, 
by some means or other, that apparent hinderance 



XXXviii THE LIFE OF 

of my faithful labours, who gave me an answer 
accordingly : for this malicious man going hastily 
to London to exasperate my patron against me, 
was then and there swept away by the pesti- 
lence, and never returned to do any farther mis- 
chief. Now the coast was clear before me, and 
I gained every day of the good opinion and fa- 
vourable respects of that honourable gentleman 
and my worthy neighbours. Being now, there- 
fore, settled in that sweet and civil country of 
Suffolk, near to St. Edmund's Bury, my first 
work was to build up my house, which was ex- 
tremely ruinous; which done, the uncouth soli- 
tariness of my life, and the extreme incommodity 
of that single housekeeping, drew my thoughts, 
after two years, to condescend to the necessity 
of a married estate, which God no less strangely 
provided for me ; for, walking from the church 
on Monday in the Whitsun week, with a grave 
and reverend minister, Mr. Grandidg, I saw a 
comely and modest gentlewoman standing at the 
door of that house where we were invited to a 
wedding dinner, and inquiring of that worthy 
friend whether he knew her. Yes (quoth he), I 
know her well, and have bespoken her for your 
wife. When I farther demanded an account of 
that answer, he told me, she was the daughter of 
a gentleman whom he much respected, Mr. George 
WinnifF, of Bretenham; that out of an opinion 
had of the fitness of that match for me, he had 



BISHOP HALL. XXXIX 

already treated with her father about it, whom he 
found very apt to entertain it, advising me not to 
neglect the opportunity ; and not concealing the 
just praises of modesty, piety, good disposition, 
and other virtues that were lodged in that seemly 
presence. I listened to the motion as sent from 
God, and at last, upon due prosecution, happily 
prevailed, enjoying the comfortable society of 
that meet help for the space of forty-nine years. 
I had not passed two years in this estate, when 
my noble friend Sir Edmund Bacon, with whom 
I had much entireness, came to me, and earnestly 
solicited me for my company in a journey by him 
projected to the Spa, in Ardenna, laying before 
me the safety, the easiness, the pleasure, and the 
benefit of that small extravagance, if opportunity 
were taken of that time, when the Earl of Hert- 
ford passed in embassy to the Archduke Albert 
of Brussels. I soon yielded, as for the reasons 
by him urged, so especially for the great desire I 
had to inform myself ocularly of the state and 
practice of the Romish church; the knowledge 
whereof might be of no small use to me in my 
holy station. Having, therefore, taken careful 
order for the supply of my charge, with the as- 
sent and good allowance of my nearest friends, I 
entered into this secret voyage. We waited some 
days at Harwich for a wind which we hoped 
might waft us to Dunkirk, where our ambassa- 
dor had lately landed, but at last, having spent a 



Xl THE LIFE OF 

day and half a night at sea, we were forced, for 
want of favour from the wind, to put in at Queen- 
borough, from whence coasting over the rich and 
pleasant country of Kent, we renewed our ship- 
ping at Dover, and soon landing at Calais. We 
passed after two days by waggon to the strong 
towns of Graveling and Dunkirk, where I could 
not but find much horror in myself to pass under 
those dark and dreadful prisons, where so many 
brave Englishmen had breathed out their souls in 
a miserable captivity. From thence we passed 
through Winoxberg, Ipre, Gaunt, Courtray, to 
Brussels, where the ambassador had newly sat 
down before us. That noble gentleman in whose 
company I travelled was welcomed with many 
kind visitations ; amongst the rest there came to 
him an English gentleman who, having run him- 
self out of breath in the inns of court, had for- 
saken his country, and therewith his religion, and 
was turned both bigot and physician, residing 
now in Brussels. This man, after few inter- 
changes of compliment with Sir Edmund Bacon, 
fell into a hyperbolical predication of trie wonder- 
ful miracles done newly by our Lady at Zichem, 
or Sherpen Heavell, that is, Sharp Hill, [called] 
by Lipsius, Apricollis ; the credit whereof, when 
that worthy knight wittily questioned, he avowed 
a particular miracle of cure wrought by her upon 
himself. I coming into the room in the midst of 
this discourse (habited not like a divine, but in 



BISHOP HALL. xli 

such colour and fashion as might best secure my 
travel), and hearing my countryman's zealous and 
confident relations, at last asked him this ques- 
tion: Sir (quoth I), put case this report of yours 
be granted for true, I beseech you teach what 
difference there is betwixt these miracles which 
you say are wrought by this lady, and those 
which were wrought by Vespasian, by some ves- 
tals, by charms and spells ; the rather for that I 
have noted, in the late published report of these 
miracles, some patients prescribed to come upon 
a Friday, and some to wash in such a well be- 
fore their approach ; and divers other such charm- 
like observations. The gentleman, not expecting 
such a question from me, answered, Sir, I do not 
profess this kind of scholarship, but we have in 
the city many famous divines, with whom, if it 
would please you to confer, you might sooner 
receive satisfaction. I asked him whom he took 
for the most eminent divine of that place; he 
named to me Father Costerus, undertaking that 
he would be very glad to give me conference, if 
I would be pleased to come up to the Jesuit's 
college : I willingly yielded. In the afternoon 
the forward gentleman prevented his time to at- 
tend me to the father (as he styled him), who (as 
he said) was ready to entertain me with a meet- 
ing. I went alone with him ; the porter, shutting 
the door after me, welcomed me with a Deo gra- 
tias. I had not stayed long in the Jesuit's Hall 



xlii THE LIFE OF 

before Costerus came in to me, who, after a friendly 
salutation, fell into a formal speech of the unity 
of that church, out of which is no salvation, and 
had proceeded to leese his breath and labour, 
had not I (as civilly as I might), interrupted him 
with this short answer : — Sir, I beseech you, mis- 
take me not: my nation tells you of what religion 
I am ; I €ome not hither out of any doubt of my 
professed belief, or any purpose to change it, but 
moving a question to this gentleman, concerning 
the pretended miracles of the time, he pleased to 
refer me to yourself for my answer, which motion 
of his I was the more willing to embrace, for the 
fame that I have heard of your learning and worth, 
and if you can give me satisfaction herein, I am 
ready to receive it. Hereupon we settled to our 
places, at a table in the end of the hail, and 
buckled to a farther discourse. He fell into a 
poor and unperfect account of the difference of 
divine miracles and diabolical ; which I modestly 
refuted. From thence he slipped into a choleric 
invective against our church, which (as he said) 
could not yield one miracle ; and when I answered 
that in our church we had manifest proof of the 
ejection of devils by fasting and prayer, he an- 
swered, that if it could be proved that ever any 
devil was dispossessed in our church, he would 
change his religion, Many questions were in- 
stantly traversed by us, wherein I found no satis- 
faction sdven me. The conference was long; and 



BISHOP HALL. xliii 

vehement ; in the heat whereof, who should come 
in but Father Baldwin, an English Jesuit, known 
to me, as by my face (after I came to Brussels), 
so much more by fame; he sat down upon a 
bench, at the farther end of the table, and heard 
no small part of our dissertation, seeming not too 
well apaid, that a gentleman of his nation (for 
still I was spoken to in that habit, by the style of 
Dominatio vestra) should depart from the Je- 
suit's college no better satisfied. On the next 
morning, therefore, he sends the same English 
physician to my lodging, with a courteous com- 
pellation, professing to take it unkindly that his 
countryman should make choice of any other to 
confer with than himself, who desired both mine 
acquaintance and satisfaction. Sir Edmund 
Bacon, in whose hearing the message was deli- 
vered, gave me secret signs of his utter unwilling- 
ness to give way to my further conferences, the 
issue whereof (since we were to pass farther and 
beyond the bounds of that protection), might 
prove dangerous. I returned a mannerly answer 
of thanks to Father Baldwin; but for any further 
conference, that it were bootless; I could not 
hope to convert him, and was resolved he should 
not alter me ; and therefore both of us should 
rest where we were. Departing from Brussels, 
we were for Narnur's and Liege. In the way we 
found the good hand of God, in delivering us 
from the danger of freebooters and of a nightly en^ 



xliv THE LIFE OF 

trance (amidst a suspicious convoy), into the 
bloody city. Thence we came to the Spadane 
waters, where I had good leisure to add a second 
century of meditations to those I had published 
before my journey. After we had spent a just 
time at those medicinal wells, we returned to 
Liege, and in our pass up the river Mosa, I had 
a dangerous conflict with a Sorbonnist, a prior of 
the Carmelites, who took occasion, by our kneel- 
ing at the receipt of the eucharist, to persuade all 
the company of our acknowledgment of a tran- 
substantiation. I satisfied the cavil, showing 
upon what ground this meet posture obtained 
with us. The man grew furious upon his convic- 
tion, and his vehement associates began to join 
with him in a right down railing upon our church 
and religion. I told them they knew where they 
were ; for me, I had taken notice of the security 
of their laws, inhibiting any argument held against 
their religion established, and therefore stood 
only upon my defence, not casting any aspersion 
upon theirs, but ready to maintain our own, 
which, though I performed in as fair terms as I 
might, yet the choler of those zealots was so 
moved, that the paleness of their changed coun- 
tenances began to threaten some perilous issue, 
had not Sir Edmund Bacon, both by his eye and 
his tongue, wisely taken me off. I subduced 
myself speedily from their presence to avoid fur- 
ther provocation. The prior began to bewray 



BISHOP HALL. xlv 

some suspicions of my borrowed habit, and told 
them, that himself had a green satin suit once 
prepared for his travels into England; so as I 
found it needful for me to lie close at Namur's ; 
from whence travelling the next day towards 
Brussels in the company of two Italian cap- 
tains, Signior Ascanio Nigro and another, whose 
name I have forgotten; who inquiring into our 
nation and religion, wondered to hear that we had 
any baptism or churches in England. The con- 
gruity of my Latin (in respect of their perfect 
barbarism), drew me and the rest into their sus- 
picion, so as I might overhear them muttering to 
each other, that we were not the men we appear- 
ed, straight the one of them boldly expressed his 
conceit, and, together with this charge, began to 
inquire of our condition. I told him that the 
gentleman he saw before us was the grandchild 
of that renowned Bacon, the great chancellor of 
England, a man of great birth and quality, and 
that myself and my other companion travelled in 
his attendance to the Spa; from the train, and 
under the privilege of our late ambassador, with 
which just answer I stopped their mouths. 

Returning through Brussels we came down to 
Antwerp, the paragon of cities ; where my curio- 
sity to see a solemn procession on St. John Bap- 
tist's day might have drawn me into danger 
(through my willing unreverence), had not the 
hulk of a tall Brabanter, behind whom I stood 



xlvi THE LIFE OF 

in a corner of the street, shadowed me from 
notice. Thence down the fair river of Scheld, 
we came to Flushing, where, upon the resolution 
of our company to stay some hours, I hasted to 
Middleburgh, to see an ancient college. That 
visit lost me my passage ; ere I could return, I 
might see our ship under sail for England; the 
master had with the wind altered his purpose, 
and called aboard with such eagerness, that my 
company must either away, or undergo the hazard 
of too much loss. I looked long after them in 
vain, and sadly returning to Middleburgh, waited 
long for an inconvenient and tempestuous pas- 
sage. 

After some year and half it pleased God un- 
expectedly to contrive the change of my station. 
My means were but short at Halsted; yet such 
as I oft professed, if my then patron would have 
added but one ten pounds by year (which I held 
to be the value of my detained due), I should 
never have removed. One morning, as I lay in 
my bed, a strong motion was suddenly glanced 
into my thoughts of going to London. I arose 
and took me to the way; the ground that ap- 
peared of that purpose was to speak with my 
patron, Sir Xtobert Drury, if, by occasion of the 
public preachership of St. Edmund's Bury, then 
offered me upon good conditions, I might draw 
him to a willing yieldance of that parcel of my 
due maintenance, which was kept back from my 



BISHOP HALL. xlvii 

not over deserving predecessor; who hearing my 
errand, dissuaded me from so ungainful a change, 
which had it been for my sensible advantage, he 
would have readily given way unto ; but not of- 
fering the expected encouragement of my conti- 
nuance. With him I stayed and preached on the 
Sunday following: that day Sir Robert Drury 
meeting with the Lord Denny, fell belike into the 
commendation of my sermon. That religious and 
noble lord had long harboured good thoughts 
concerning me, upon the reading of those poor 
pamphlets which I had formerly published, and 
long wished the opportunity to know me. To 
please him in his desire, Sir Robert willed me 
to go and tender my service to his lordship, 
which I modestly and seriously deprecated ; yet 
upon his earnest charge went to his lordship's 
gate, where I was not sorry to hear of his ab- 
sence. And being now full of cold and distem- 
per, in Drury Lane., I was found by a friend in 
whom I had formerly no great interest, one Mr. 
Gurrey, tutor to the Earl of Essex. He told me 
how well my Meditations were accepted at the 
prince's court; and earnestly advised me to step 
over to Richmond, and preach to his highness 2 . 
I strongly pleaded my indisposition of body, and 
my impreparation for any such work, together 
with my bashful fears, and utter unfitness for 

2 Prince Heniy. 



xlviii THE LIFE OF 

such a presence. My averseness doubled his im- 
portunity : in fine, he left me not till he had my 
engagement to preach the Sunday following at 
Richmond : he made way for me to that awful 
pulpit, and encouraged me by the favour of his 
noble lord, the Earl of Essex. I preached 
through the favour of my God. That sermon 
was not so well given as taken; insomuch as 
that sweet prince signified his desire to hear me 
again the Tuesday following, which done, that 
labour gave more contentment than the former; 
so as that gracious prince both gave me his hand 
and commanded me to his service. My patron 
seeing me (upon my return to London) looked 
after by some great persons, began to wish me at 
home, and told me that some one or other would 
be snatching me up. I answered, that it was in 
his power to prevent; would he be pleased to 
make my maintenance but so competent as in right 
it should be, T would never stir from him. In- 
stead of condescending, it pleased him to fall into 
an expostulation of the rate of competences, af- 
firming the variableness thereof, according to our 
own estimation, and our either raising or mode- 
rating the causes of our expenses. I showed 
him the insufficiency of my means, that I was 
forced to write books to buy books. Shortly, 
some harsh and unpleasing answer so disheart- 
ened me, that I resolved to embrace the first op- 
portunity of remove. Now while I was taken 



BISHOP HALL. xlix 

up with these anxious thoughts, a messenger (it 
was Sir Robert Wingfield, of Northampton's, son) 
came to me from the Lord Denny (now earl of 
Norwich), my after most honourable patron, en- 
treating me from his lordship to speak with him. 
No sooner came I thither than, after a glad and 
noble welcome, I was entertained with the noble 
earnest offer of Waltham. The conditions were, 
like the mover, free and bountiful. I received 
them as from the munificent hands of my God, 
and returned full of the cheerful acknowledg- 
ments of a gracious Providence over me. Too 
late now did my former noble patron relent, and 
offer me those terms which had before fastened 
me for ever. I returned home happy in a new 
master and in a new patron ; betwixt whom I 
divided myself and my labours, with much com- 
fort and no less acceptation. In the second year 
of mine attendance on his highness, when I came 
for my dismission from that monthly service, it 
pleased the prince to command me a longer stay, 
and at last, upon my allowed departure, by the 
mouth of Sir Thomas Challoner, his governor, to 
tender unto me a motion of more honour and fa- 
vour than I was worthy of; which was, that it 
was his highness's pleasure and purpose to have 
me continually resident at the court, as a con- 
stant attendant, whiles the rest held on their wont- 
ed vicissitudes; for which purpose his highness 
would obtain for me such preferment as would 



1 THE LIFE OF 

yield me full contentment. I returned my hum- 
blest thanks, and my readiness to sacrifice my- 
self to the service of so gracious a master ; but 
being conscious to myself of my unanswerable- 
ness to so great expectation, and loath to forsake 
so dear and noble a patron, who had placed much 
of his heart upon me, I did modestly put it off, 
and held close to my Waltham; where, in a con- 
stant course, I preached a long time (as I had 
done also at Halsted before), thrice in the week. 
Yet never durst I climb into the pulpit, to preach 
any sermon, whereof I had not before in my poor 
and plain fashion, penned every word in the same 
order wherein I hoped to deliver it, although in 
the expression I listed not to be a slave to syl- 
lables. 

In this while my worthy kinsman, Mr. Samuel 
Barton, archdeacon of Gloucester, knowing in 
how good terms I stood at court, and pitying the 
miserable condition of his native church of Wol- 
verhampton, was very desirous to engage me in 
so difficult and noble a service as the redemp- 
tion of that captivated church ; for which cause 
he importuned me to move some of my friends 
to solicit the Dean of Windsor (who, by an an- 
tient annexation, is patron thereof), for the 
grant of a particular prebend, when it should fall 
vacant in that church. Answer was returned 
me, that it was forepromised to one of my fellow 
chaplains. I sat down without further expecta- 



BISHOP HALL. ll 

tion. Some year or two after, hearing that it was 
become void, and meeting with that fellow chap- 
lain of mine, I wished him much joy of that pre- 
bend. He asked me if it were void ; I assured 
him so ; and telling him of the former answer de- 
livered unto me, in my ignorance, of his engage- 
ment, wished him to hasten his possession of it. 
He delayed not : when he came to the Dean of 
Windsor for his promised dispatch, the dean 
brought him forth a letter from the prince, wherein 
he was desired and charged to reverse his former 
engagement (since that other chaplain was other- 
wise provided for), and to cast that favour upon 
me. I was sent for (who least thought of it), and 
received the free collation of that poor dignity, it 
was not the value of the place (which was but 
nine nobles per annum) that we aimed at, but 
the freedom of a goodly church (consisting of a 
dean and eight prebendaries, competently en- 
dowed), and many thousand souls lamentably 
swallowed up by wilful recusants, in a pretended 
fee-farm for ever. O God, what a hand hadst 
thou in the carriage of this work ! When we set 
foot in this suit (for another of the prebendaries 
joined with me), we knew not wherein to insist, 
nor where to ground our complaint, only we knew 
that a goodly patrimony was by sacrilegious con- 
veyance detained from the church. But in the 
pursuit of it such marvellous light opened itself 
inexpectedly to us, in revealing of a counterfeit 

c 2 



Hi THE LIFE OF 

seal found in the ashes of that burned house of a 
false register; in the manifestation of erasures, 
interpolations, and misdates of unjustifiable evi- 
dences, that after many many years suit, the wise 
and honourable lord chancellor, Ellesmere, upon 
a full hearing, adjudged these two sued for pre- 
bends, clearly to be returned to the church, until 
by common law they could (if possibly) be re- 
victed. Our great adversary, Sir Walt. Leve- 
son, finding it but loss and trouble to strive for 
litigious sheaves, came off to a peaceable com- 
position with me of forty pounds per annum for 
my part, whereof ten should be to the discharge 
of my stall in that church, till the suit should, by 
course of common law, be determined; we agreed 
upon fair wars. The cause was heard at the 
King's Bench bar; where a special verdict was 
given for us. Upon the death of my partner in 
the suit (in whose name it had been brought), it 
was renewed ; a jury empannelled in the county; 
the foreman (who had vowed he would carry it 
for Sir Walter Leveson howsoever) was before 
the day stricken mad, and so continued ; we pro- 
ceeded with the same success we formerly had. 
Whiles we were thus striving, a word fell from 
my adversary, that gave me information that a 
third dog would perhaps come in and take the 
bone from us both ; which I finding to drive at a 
supposed concealment, happily prevented, for I 
presently addressed myself to his majesty, with 



BISHOP HALL. liii 

a petition for renewing the charter of that church, 
and the full establishment of the lands, rights, and 
liberties thereunto belonging ; which I easily ob- 
tained from those gracious hands. Now Sir 
Walter Leveson, seeing the patrimony of the 
church so fast and safely settled, and misdoubt- 
ing what issue those his crazy evidences would 
find at the common law, began to incline to offers 
of peace, and at last drew him so far, as that he 
yielded to those two many conditions, not parti- 
cularly for myself, but for the whole body of all 
those prebends which pertained to the church. 
First, that he would be content to cast up that 
fee-farm, which he had of all the patrimony of 
that church, and disclaiming it, receive that which 
he held of the said church by lease, from us the 
several prebendaries, from term whether of years 
or (which he rather desired) of lives. Secondly, 
that he would raise the maintenance of every pre- 
bend (whereof some were but forty shillings, 
others three pounds, others four pounds, &c.) to 
the yearly value of thirty pounds for each man, 
during the said term of his lease ; only for the 
monument of my labour and success berein I re- 
quired that my prebend might have the addition 
of ten pounds per annum above the fellows. We 
were busily treating of this happy match for that 
poor church ; Sir Walter Leveson was not only 
willing but forward; the then dean, Mr. Anto- 
nius de Dominus, archbishop of Spalata, gave 



iiv THE LIFE OF 

both way and furtherance to the despatch, all 
had been most happily ended, had not the scru- 
pulousness of one or two of the number deferred 
so advantageous a conclusion. In the mean- 
while Sir Walter Leveson dies, leaves his young 
orphan ward to the king ; all our hopes were now 
blown up ; an office was found of all those lands; 
the very wonted payments were denied, and I 
called into the court of wards, in fair likelihood 
to forego my former hold, and yielded a posses- 
sion : but there it was justly awarded by the lord 
treasurer, then master of the wards, that the or- 
phan could have no more, no other right than the 
father. I was therefore left in my former state, 
only upon public complaint of the hard condition 
wherein the orphan was left; I suffered myself 
to be overentreated to abate somewhat of that 
evicted composition : which work having once 
firmly settled, in a just pity of the mean provi- 
sion, if not the destitution of so many thousand 
souls, and a desire and care to have them com- 
fortably provided for in the future, I resigned up 
the said prebend to a worthy preacher, Mr. Lee, 
who should constantly reside there, and painfully 
instruct that great and long neglected people, 
which he hath hitherto performed with great mu- 
tual contentment and happy success. Now dur- 
ing this twenty- two years which I spent at Wal- 
tham, thrice was I commanded and employed 
abroad by his majesty in public service. 



BISHOP HALL. lv 

First, in the attendance of the right honourable 
the Earl of Carlisle (then Lord Viscount Don- 
caster), who was sent upon a noble embassy, 
with a gallant retinue, into France ; whose enter- 
ment there the annals of that nation will tell to 
posterity. In the midst of that service was I 
surprised with a miserable distemper of body, 
which ended in a Diarroea Biliosa, not without 
some beginnings and further threats of a dysen- 
tery ; wherewith I was brought so low that there 
seemed small hopes of my recovery. M. Peter 
Moulin (to whom I was beholding for his fre- 
quent visitations), being sent by my lord ambas- 
sador to inform him of my estate, brought him 
so sad news thereof, as that he was much afflicted 
therewith, well supposing that his welcome to 
Waltham could not but want much of his heart 
without me. Now the time of his return drew 
on; Dr. Moulin kindly offered to remove me, 
upon his lordship's departure, to his own house ; 
promised me all careful tendance. I thanked 
him, but resolved, if I could but creep home- 
wards, to put myself upon the journey. A litter 
was provided, but ol so little ease, that Simions 
penitential lodging, or a malefactor's stocks, had 
been less penal. I crawled down from my close 
chamber into that carriage, in aqua videbaris 
mihi efferri tanquam in sandapila, as M. Mou- 
lin wrote to me afterward, that misery had I en- 
dured all the long passage from Paris to Deep* 



Ivi THE LIFE OF 

being left alone to the surly Muleteers, had not 
my good God brought me to St. Germain's upon 
the very minute of the setting out of those coaches, 
which had stayed there upon that morning's en- 
tertainment of my lord ambassador. How glad 
was I that I might change my seat and my com- 
pany. In the way, beyond all expectation, I 
began to gather some strength ; whether the fresh 
air or the desires of my home revived me, so 
much and so sudden reparation ensued as was 
sensible to myself, and seemed strange to others. 
Being shipped at Deep, the sea used us hardly, 
and after a night and a great part of the day fol- 
lowing, sent us back, well wind -beaten, to that 
bleak haven whence we set forth, forcing us to a 
more pleasing land passage through the coasts of 
Normandy and Picardy ; towards the end where- 
of my former complaint returned upon me, and 
landing with me, accompanied me to and at my 
long desired home. In this my absence it pleased 
his majesty graciously to confer upon me the 
deanery of Worcester; which being promised me 
before my departure, was deeply hazarded whiles 
I was out of sight, by the importunity and under- 
hand working of some great ones. Dr. Field, the 
learned and worthy dean of Gloucester, was by his 
potent friends put into such assurances of it, that 
I heard where he took care for the furnishing that 
ample house ; but God fetched it about for me 
in that absence and nescience of mine; and that 



BISHOP HALL. hi! 

reverend and better deserving divine was well 
satisfied with greater hopes ; and soon after ex- 
changing this mortal estate for an immortal and 
glorious. Before I could go down, through my 
continuing weakness, to take possession of that 
dignity, his majesty pleased to design me to his 
attendance into Scotland; where the great love 
and respect that I found, both from the ministers 
and people, wrought me no small envy from some 
of our own, upon*a commonly received supposi- 
tion, that his majesty would have no further use 
of his chaplains after his remove from Edinburgh, 
forasmuch as the divines of the country, whereof 
there is great store and worthy choice, were al- 
lotted to every station, I easily obtained, through 
the solicitation of my ever honoured Lord of Car- 
lisle, to return with him before my fellows. No 
sooner was I gone than suggestions were made 
to his majesty of my over plausible demeanour 
and doctrine to that already prejudicate people, 
for which his majesty, after a gracious acknow- 
ledgment of my good service there done, called 
me, upon his return, to a favourable and mild 
account; not more freely professing what infor- 
mations had been given against me than his own 
full satisfaction with my sincere and just answer; 
as whose excellent wisdom well saw, that such 
winning carriage of mine could be no hinderance 
to those his great designs. At the same time his 
majesty having secret notice that a letter was 

c3 



Ivlli THE LIFE OF 

coming to me from Mr. W. Struther, a reverend 
and learned divine of Edinburgh, concerning the 
five points then proposed and urged to the church 
of Scotland, was pleased to impose upon me an 
earnest charge to give him a full answer of those 
modest doubts ; and at large to declare my judg- 
ment concerning those required observations, 
which I speedily performed with so great appro- 
bation of his majesty, that it pleased him to com- 
mand a transcript thereof, as I was informed, 
publicly read in their most famous university; 
the effect whereof his majesty vouchsafed to sig- 
nify afterwards, unto some of my best friends, 
with allowance beyond my hopes* 

It was not long after that his majesty, finding 
the exigence of the affairs of the Netherlandish 
churches to require it, both advised them to a 
synodical decision, and, by his incomparable wis- 
dom, promoted the work. My unworthiness was 
named for one of the assistants of that honour- 
able, grave, and reverend meeting, where I failed 
not of my best service to that woful distracted 
church. By that time I had stayed some two 
months there; the unquietness of the nights, in 
those garrison towns, working upon the tender 
disposition of my body, brought me to such 
weakness, through want of rest, that it began to 
disable me from attending the synod, which yet, 
as I might, I forced myself unto, as wishing that 
my zeal could have discountenanced my infir- 



BISHOP HALL. lix 

mity. Where, in the mean time, it is well worthy 
of my thankful remembrance, that being in an 
afflicted and languishing condition, for a fort- 
night together, with that sleepless distemper, yet 
it pleased God, the very night before I was to 
preach the Latin sermon to the synod, to bestow 
upon me such a comfortable refreshing of suffi- 
cient sleep, as whereby my spirits were revived, 
and I was enabled with much vivacity to per- 
form that service; which was no sooner done 
than my former complaint renewed upon me, and 
prevailed against all the remedies that the council 
of physicians could advise me unto; so as after 
long strife I was compelled to yield unto a retire- 
ment (for the time) to the Hague, to see if change 
of place and more careful attendance, which I 
had in the house of our right honourable ambas- 
sador, the Lord Carleton (now Viscount Dor- 
chester), might recover me. But when, notwith- 
standing all means, my weakness increased so 
far as that there was small likelihood left of so 
much strength remaining as might bring me back 
into England, it pleased his gracious majesty, by 
our noble ambassador's solicitation, to call me 
off, and to substitute a worthy divine, Mr. Dr. 
Goade, in my unwilling forsaken room. Return- 
ing by Dort, I sent in my sad farewell to that 
grave assembly, who, by common vote, sent to 
me the president of the synod, and the assistants, 
with a respective and gracious valediction. Nei- 



Ix THE LIFE OF 

ther did the deputies of my lords the states neg- 
lect (after a very respectful compliment sent from 
them to me by Daniel Heinsius) to visit me; 
and after a noble acknowledgment of more good 
service from me than I durst own, dismissed me 
with an honourable retribution, and sent after me 
a rich medal of gold, the portracture of the synod, 
for a precious monument of their respects to my 
poor endeavours, who failed not whiles I was at 
the Hague to impart unto them my poor advice, 
concerning that synodical meeting. The difficul- 
ties of my return in such weakness were many 
and great; wherein, if ever, God manifested his 
special Providence to me in overruling the cross 
accidents of that passage, and after many dangers 
and despairs contriving my safe arrival. 

After not many years settling at home, it 
grieved my soul to see our own church begin to 
sicken of the same disease which we had endea- 
voured to cure in our neighbours. Mr. Mon- 
tague's tart and vehement assertions, of some po- 
sitions near a kin to the remonstrants of Nether- 
land, gave occasion of no small broil in the 
church. Sides were taken, pulpits every where 
rang of these opinions ; but parliaments took no- 
tice of the division, and questioned the occa- 
sioned Now as one that desired to do all good 
offices to our dear and common mother, I set my 
thoughts on work, how so dangerous a quarrel 
might be happily composed; and finding that 



BTSHOP HALL. lxi 

mistaking was more guilty of this dissension than 
misbelieving (since it plainly appeared to me that 
Mr. Montague meant to express not Arminius, 
but B. Overall, a more moderate and safe author, 
however he sped in delivery of him), I wrote a 
little project of pacification, wherein I desired to 
rectify the judgment of men concerning this mis- 
apprehended controversy ; showing them the true 
parties in this unseasonable plea. And because 
B. Overall went a midway betwixt the two opi- 
nions, which he held extreme, and must needs 
therefore differ somewhat in the commonly re- 
ceived tenets in these points, I gathered out of 
B. Overall on the one side, and out of our Eng- 
lish divines at Dort on the other, such common 
propositions concerning these five busy articles 
as wherein both of them are fully agreed; all 
which being put together, seemed unto me to 
make up so sufficient a body of accorded truth, 
that all other questions moved hereabouts ap- 
peared merely superfluous, and every moderate 
Christian might find where to rest himself without 
hazard of contradiction. These I made bold, by 
the hands of Dr. Young, the worthy Dean of 
Winchester, to present to his excellent majesty, 
together with a humble motion of a peaceable 
silence to be enjoined to both parts, in those 
other collateral and needless disquisitions ; which 
if they might befit the schools of academical dis- 
putants, could not certainly sound well from the 



lxii THE LIFE OF 

pulpits of popular auditories. Those reconcilia- 
tory papers fell under the eyes of some grave di- 
vines on both parts. Mr. Montague professed 
that he had seen them, and would subscribe to 
them very willingiy; others that were contrarily 
minded, both English, Scottish, and French di- 
vines, proffered their hands to a no less ready 
subscription ; so as much peace promised to re- 
sult out of that weak and poor enterprise, had 
not the confused noise of the misconstructions of 
those who never saw the work (crying it down 
for the very name's sake), meeting with the royal 
edict of a general inhibition, buried it in a secure 
silence. I was scorched a little with this flame 
which I desired to quench; yet this could not 
stay my hand from thrusting itself into a hotter 
fire. 

Some insolent Romanists (Jesuits especially), 
in their bold disputations (which, in the time of 
the treaty of the Spanish match, and the calm of 
that relaxation were very frequent), pressed no- 
thing so much as a catalogue of the professors of 
our religion to be deduced from the primitive 
times, and with the peremptory challenge of the 
impossibility of this pedigree dazzled the eyes of 
the simple ; whiles some of our learned men, un- 
dertaking to satisfy so needless and unjust a de- 
mand, gave, as I conceive, great advantage to 
the adversary. In a just indignation to see us 
thus wronged by misstating the question betwixt 



BISHOP HALL. Ixiii 

us, as if we, yielding ourselves of another church, 
originally and fundamentally different, should 
make good our own erection upon the ruins, yea 
the nullity of theirs, and well considering the in- 
finite and great inconveniences that must needs 
follow upon this defence, I adventured to set my 
pen on work, desiring to rectify the opinions of 
those men whom an ignorant zeal had transported 
to the prejudice of our holy cause; laying forth 
the damnable corruptions of the Roman church, 
yet making our game at the outward visibility 
thereof, and by this means putting them to the 
probation of those newly obtruded corruptions 
which are truly guilty of the breach betwixt us. 
The drift whereof, being not well conceived by 
some spirits that were not so wise as fervent, I 
was suddenly exposed to the rash censures of 
many well affected and zealous Protestants, as 
if a remission to my wonted zeal to the truth at- 
tributed too much to the Roman church, and 
strengthened the adversary's hands and weakened 
our own. This envy I was fain to take off by 
my speedy apologetical advertisement, and after 
that by my reconciler, seconded with the unanimous 
letters of such reverend, learned, sound divines, 
both bishops and doctors 3 , as whose undoubt- 
able authority was able to bear down calumny 
itself. Which done, I did, by a seasonable mo- 

3 Bishop Morton, Bishop Davenant, Dr. Prideaux, Dr. 
Primrose. 



lxiv THE LIFE OF 

deration, provide for the peace of the church, in 
silencing both my defendants and challengers in 
this unkind and ill raised quarrel. Immediately 
before the publishing of this tractate (which did 
not a little aggravate the envy and suspicion) I 
was by his majesty raised to be Bishop of Exe- 
ter, having formerly (with much humble depre- 
cation) refused the See of Gloucester, earnestly 
proffered unto me. How beyond all expecta- 
tion, it pleased God to place me in that western 
charge; which (if the Duke of Buckingham's 
letters, he being then in France, had arrived some 
hours sooner) I had been defeated of; and by 
what strange means it pleased God to make up 
the competency of that provision, by the un- 
thought of addition of the Rectory of St. Breock, 
within that diocess, if I should fully relate the 
circumstances, would force the confession of an 
extraordinary hand of God in the disposing of 
those events. I entered upon that place, not 
without much prejudice and suspicion on some 
hands; for some that sat at the stern of the 
church had me in great jealousy for too much 
favour of puritanism. I soon had intelligence 
who were set over me for espials ; my ways were 
curiously observed and scanned. However, I 
took the resolution to follow those courses which 
might most conduce to the peace and happiness 
of my new and weighty charge. Finding, there- 
fore, some factious spirits very busy in that dio~ 



BISHOP HALL. Ixv 

cess, I used all fair and gentle means to win them 
to good order, and therein so happily prevailed, 
that (saving two of that numerous clergy, who 
continuing in their refractoriness, fled away from 
censure) they were all perfectly reclaimed: so 
as I had not one minister professedly opposite to 
the anciently received orders (for I was never 
guilty of urging any new impositions) of the 
church in that large diocess. Thus we went on 
comfortably together till some persons of note in 
the clergy, being guilty of their own negligence 
and disorderly courses, began to envy our suc- 
cess; and rinding me ever ready to encourage 
those whom I found conscionably forward and 
painful in their places, and willingly giving way 
to orthodox and peaceable lectures in several 
parts of my diocess, opened their mouths against 
me, both obliquely in the pulpit, and directly at 
the court, complaining of my too much indul- 
gence to persons disaffected, and my too much 
liberty of frequent lecturings within my charge. 
The billows went so high that I was three seve- 
ral times upon my knee to his majesty, to answer 
these great criminations, and what contestation I 
had with some great lords concerning these par- 
ticulars, it would be too long to report; only this, 
under how dark a cloud I was hereupon, I was 
so sensible, that I plainly told the Lord Archbi- 
shop of Canterbury, that rather than I would be 
obnoxious to those slanderous tongues of his mis- 



Ixvi THE LIFE OF 

informers I would cast up my rochet : I knew I 
went right ways, and would not endure to live 
under undeserved suspicions. What messages 
of caution I had from some of my wary brethren, 
and what expostulatory letters I had from above, 
I need not relate : sure I am I had peace and 
comfort at home, in that happy sense of that ge- 
neral unanimity and loving correspondence of my 
clergy, till in the last year of presiding there, 
after the synodical oath was set on foot (which 
yet I did never tender to any one minister of my 
diocess) by the incitation of some busy inter- 
lopers of the neighbour county, some of them be- 
gan to enter into an unkind contestation with me, 
about the election of clerks for the convocation, 
whom they secretly, without ever acquainting me 
with their desire or purpose (as driving to that 
end which we see now accomplished), would 
needs nominate and set up in competition to 
those whom I had (after the usual form) recom- 
mended to them. That they had a right to free 
voices in that choice I denied not; only I had 
reason to take it unkindly, that they would work 
underhand without me and against me ; profess- 
ing that if beforehand they had made their de-. 
sires known to me, I should willingly have gone 
along with them in their election; it came to the 
poll ; those of my nomination carried it ; the par- 
liament begun; after some hard tugging there, 
returning home upon a recess, I was met by the 



BISHOP HALL. lxvii 

way and cheerfully welcomed with some hun- 
dreds. In no worse terms, I left that my once 
dear diocess, when returning to Westminster, I 
was soon called by his majesty (who was then in 
the North) to a remove to Norwich : but how I 
took the tower in my way, and how I have been 
dealt with since my repair hither,, I could be 
lavish in the sad report, ever desiring my good 
God to enlarge my heart in thankfulness to him, 
for the sensible experience I have had of his fa- 
therly hand over me, in the deepest of all my 
afflictions, and to strengthen me for whatsoever 
other trials he shall be pleased to call me unto ; 
that being found faithful unto the death, I may 
obtain that crown of life which he hath ordained 
for all those that overcome. 



The account which this distinguished and virtuous prelate gives 
of the Hard Measure dealt out to him by the Parliament, 
being a recital of some of the most extraordinary events of his 
time, may be subjoined to this Memoir of his early Life with 
great propriety. The relation embraces an interesting account 
of the persecution of the Bishops by the Parliament, and a very 
curious picture of the ungovernable fury of the Puritanic 
Iconoclasts, 



BISHOP HALL'S HARD MEASURE. 



Nothing could be more plain then, upon the 
call of this parliament and before, there was a 
general plot and resolution of the faction to 
alter the government of the church especially, 
the height and insolency of some church gover- 
nors, as was conceived, and the ungrounded im- 
position of some innovations upon the churches, 
both of Scotland and England, gave a fit hint to 
the project. In the vacancy, therefore, before 
the summons, and immediately after it, there was 
great working secretly for the designation and 
election as of knights and burgesses, so especi- 
ally (beyond all former use), of the clerks of con- 
vocation ; when now the clergy were stirred up 
to contest with, and oppose their diocesans, for 
the choice of such men as were most inclined to 
the favour of an alteration. The parliament was 
no sooner sat than many vehement speeches were 
made against established church government, and 
enforcement of extirpation, both root and branch ; 
and because it was not fit to set upon all at once, 



1XX BISHOP HALL ? S 

the resolution was to begin with those bishops 
which had subscribed to the canons then lately 
published, upon the shutting up of the former 
parliament, whom they would first have had ac- 
cused of treason. But that not appearing feasible, 
they thought best to indict them of very high 
crimes and offences against the king, the parlia- 
ment, and kingdom, which was prosecuted with 
great earnestness by some prime lawyers in the 
House of Commons, and entertained with like 
fervency by some zealous lprds in the House of 
Peers; every of those particular canons being 
pressed to the most envious and dangerous height 
that was possible. The Archbishop of York 
(was designed for the report), aggravating M. 
Maynard's criminations to the utmost, not with- 
out some interspersions of his own. The coun- 
sel of the accused bishops gave in such a de^ 
murring answer as stopped the mouth of that 
heinous indictment. When this prevailed not, it 
was contrived to draw petitions accusatory from 
many parts of the kingdom, against episcopal 
government, and the promoters of the petitions 
were entertained with great respects; whereas 
the many petitions of the opposite part, though 
subscribed with many thousand hands, were 
slighted and disregarded. Withal, the rabble 
of London, after their petitions cunningly and 
upon other pretences procured, were stirred up 
to come to the houses personally to crave justice 



HARD MEASURE. lxxi 

both against the Earl of Strafford first, and then 
against the Archbishop of Canterbury, and last, 
against the whole order of bishops ; which com- 
ing at first unarmed, were checked by some well 
willers, and easily persuaded to gird on their 
rusty swords, and so accoutred came by thou- 
sands to the house, filling all the outer rooms, 
offering foul abuses to the bishops as they passed, 
crying out, No bishops ! No bishops ; and at 
last, after divers days assembling, grown to that 
height of fury, that many of them, whereof Sir 
Richard Wiseman professed (though to his cost) 
to be captain, came with resolution of some vio- 
lent courses, insomuch that many swords were 
drawn hereupon at Westminster, and the rout did 
not stick openly to profess that they would pull 
the bishops in pieces. Messages were sent down 
to them from the lords ; they still held firm both 
to the place and their bloody resolutions. It 
now grew to be torchlight, one of the lords, the 
Marquis of Hertford, came up to the bishops' 
form, told us we were in great danger, advised 
us to take some course for our safety ; and being 
desired to tell us what he thought was the best 
way, counselled 4is to continue in the parliament 
house all that night ; for (saith he) these people 
vow they will watch you at your going out, and 
will search every coach for you with torches, so 
as you cannot escape. Hereupon the house of 
lords was moved for some order for preventing 



IxXli BISHOP HALL'S 

their mutinous and riotous meetings. Messages 
were sent down to the house of commons to this 
purpose more than onee ; nothing was effected ; 
but for the present (for all the danger was at the 
rising of the house), it was earnestly desired of 
the lords that some care might be taken for our 
safety. The motion was received by some lords 
with a smile, some other lords, as the Earl of 
Manchester, undertook the protection of the 
Archbishop of York and his company (whose 
shelter I went under) to their lodgings ; the rest, 
some of them by their long stay, others by secret 
and far fetched passages escaped home. It was 
not for us to venture any more to the house with- 
out some better assurance : upon our resolved 
forbearance, therefore, the Archbishop of York 
sent for us to his lodging at Westminster, lays 
before us the perilous condition we were in, ad- 
vises for remedy (except we meant utterly to 
abandon our right and to desert our station in 
Parliament), to petition both his majesty and the 
parliament, that since we were legally called by 
his majesty's writ to give our attendance in par- 
liament, we might be secured in the performance 
of our duty and service against those dangers 
that threatened us ; and withal to protest against 
any such acts as should be made during the time 
of our forced absence, for which he assured us 
there were many presidents in former parliament, 
and which if we did not, we should betray the 



HARD MEASURE. lxxiii 

trust committed to us by his majesty, and shame- 
fully betray and abdicate the due right both of 
ourselves and successors. To this purpose, in 
our presence, he drew up the said petition and 
protestation, avowing it to be legal, just, and 
agreeable to all former proceedings, and being 
fair written, sent it to our several lodgings for our 
hands, which we accordingly subscribed, intend- 
ing yet to have some further consultation con- 
cerning the delivering and whole carriage of it. 
But ere we could suppose it to be in any hand 
but his own, the first news we heard was, that 
there were messengers addressed to fetch us into 
the parliament upon an accusation of high trea- 
son. For whereas this paper was to have been 
delivered first to his majesty's secretary, and 
after perusal by him to his majesty, and after 
from his majesty to the parliament, and for that 
purpose to the lord keeper, the Lord Littleton, 
who was the speaker of the house of peers ; all 
these professed not to have perused it at all, but 
the said lord keeper, willing enough to take this 
advantage of ingratiating himself with the house 
of commons and the faction, to which he knew 
himself sufficiently obnoxious, finding what use 
might be made of it by prejudicate minds, reads 
the same openly in the house of lords : and when 
he found some of the faction apprehensive enough 
of misconstruction, aggravates the matter as 
highly offensive, and of dangerous consequence ; 

d 



lxxiv BISHOP HALL'S 

and thereupon, not without much heat and vehe- 
mence, and with an ill preface, it is sent down to 
the house of commons, where it was entertained 
heinously. Glynne, with a full mouth, crying it 
up for no less than an high treason; and some 
comparing, yea, preferring it to the powder plot. 
We poor souls (who little thought that we had done 
any thing that might deserve a chiding), are now 
called to our knees at the bar, and charged seve- 
rally with high treason, being not a little asto- 
nished at the suddenness of this crimination, com- 
pared with the perfect innocency of our own in- 
tentions, which were only to bring us to our due 
places in parliament with safety and speed, with- 
out the least purpose of any man's offence ; but 
now traitors we are in all the haste, and must be 
dealt with accordingly. For on January 30, in 
all the extremity of frost, at eight o'clock in the 
dark evening, are we voted to the tower; only 
two of our number had the favour of the black 
rod by reason of their age, which, though desired 
by a noble lord on my behalf, would not be 
yielded, wherein I acknowledge and bless the 
gracious providence of my God, for had I been 
gratified I had been undone both in body and 
purse ; the rooms being straight, and the expense 
beyond the reach of my estate. The news of 
this our crime and imprisonment soon flew over 
the city, and was entertained by our well wiilers 
with ringing of bells and bonfires ; who now gave 



HARD MEASURE. lxXV 

us up (not without great triumph) for lost men, 
railing on our perfidiousness, and adjudging us to 
what foul deaths they pleased ; and what scurrile 
and malicious pamphlets were scattered abroad, 
throughout the kingdom, and in foreign parts, bla- 
zoning our infamy, and exaggerating our treason- 
able practices ? What insultations of our adversa- 
ries was here ? Being caged sure enough in the 
tower, the faction had now fair opportunities to 
work their own designs, they therefore, taking the 
advantage of our restraint, renew that bill of theirs 
(which had been twice before rejected since the 
beginning of this session), for taking away the 
votes of bishops in parliament, and in a very thin 
house easily passed it : which once condescended 
unto, I know not by what strong importunity, his 
majesty's assent was drawn from him thereunto. 
We now, instead of looking after our wonted ho- 
nour, must bend our thoughts upon the guarding 
of our lives, which were, with no small eagerness, 
pursued by the violent agents of the faction. 
Their sharpest wits and greatest lawyers were 
employed to advance our impeachment to the 
height, but the more they looked into the busi- 
ness the less crime could they find to fasten 
upon us : insomuch as one of their oracles, being 
demanded his judgment concerning the fact, pro- 
fessed to them, they might with as good reason 
accuse us of adultery. Yet still there are we 
fast; only upon petition to the lords obtaining 

d2 



Ixxvi BISHOP HALL'S 

this favour, that we might have counsel assigned 
us ; which, after much reluctation, and many 
menaces from the commons against any man of 
all the commoners of England that should dare 
to be seen to plead in this case against the repre- 
sentative body of the commons was granted us. 
The lords assigned us five worthy lawyers, which 
were nominated to them by us. What trouble 
and charge it was to procure those eminent and 
much employed counsellors to come to the tower 
to us, and to observe the strict laws of the place, 
for the time of their ingress, regress, and stay, it- 
is not hard to judge. After we had lain some 
weeks there, however, the house of commons, 
upon the first tender of our impeachment, had 
desired we might be brought to a speedy trial; 
yet now finding belike how little ground they had 
for so high an accusation, they began to slack 
their pace, and suffered us rather to languish 
under the fear of so dreadful arraignment. In- 
somuch as now we are fain to petition the lords 
that we might be brought to our trial : the day 
was set; several summons were sent unto us; 
the lieutenant had his warrant to bring us to the 
bar; our impeachment was severally read; we 
pleaded not guilty viodo et forma, and desired 
speedy proceedings, which were accordingly pro- 
mised, but not too hastily performed. After long 
expectation, another day was appointed for the 
prosecution of this high charge. The lieutenant 



HARD MEASURE. Ixxvii 

brought us again to the bar, but with what shout- 
ings and exclamations and furious expressions of 
the enraged multitudes, it is not easy to appre- 
hend ; being thither brought and severally charg- 
ed upon our knees, and having given our nega- 
tive answers to every particular, two bishops, 
London and Winchester, were called in as wit- 
nesses against us, as in that point, whether tbey 
apprehended any such cause of fears in the tumults 
assembled, as that we were in any danger of our 
lives in coming to the parliament; who seemed 
to incline to a favourable report of the perils 
threatened, though one of them was convinced, 
out of his own mouth, from the relations himself 
had made at the Archbishop of York's lodging. 
After this, Wild and Glynne made fearful decla- 
mations at the bar against us, aggravating the cir- 
cumstances of our pretended treason to the high- 
est pitch. Our counsel were all ready at the bar 
to plead for us in answer of their clamorous and 
envious suggestions; but it was answered, that 
it was now too late, we should have another day, 
which day to this day never came. The circum- 
stances of that day's hearing were more grievous 
to us than the substance ; for we were all throng- 
ed so miserably in that straight room before the 
bar, by reason that the whole house of commons 
would be there to see the prizes of their cham- 
pions played ; that we stood the whole afternoon 
in no small torture ; sweating and struggling with 



Ixxviii BISHOP hall's 

a merciless multitude till, being dismissed, we 
were exposed to a new and greater danger. For 
now in the dark we must to the tower by barge, 
as we came, and must shoot the bridge with no 
small peril. That God, under whose merciful 
protection we are, returned us to our safe cus- 
tody. There now we lay some weeks longer, ex- 
pecting the summons for our counsels' answer ; but 
instead thereof our merciful adversaries, well find- 
ing how sure they would be foiled in that unjust 
charge of treason, now, under pretences of remit- 
ting the height of rigour, wave their former impeach- 
ment of treason against us, and fall upon an accusa- 
tion of high misdemeanors in that our protestation, 
and will have us prosecuted as guilty of a Premu- 
nire : although, as we conceive the law hath ever 
been in parliamentary proceedings, that if a man 
were impeached, as of treason, being the highest 
crime, the accusant must hold him to the proof of 
the charge, and may not fall to any meaner im- 
peachment upon failing of the higher. But in 
this case of ours it fell out otherwise, for although 
the lords had openly promised us that nothing 
should be done against us till we and our counsel 
were heard in our defence, yet the next news 
we heard was, the house of commons had drawn 
up a bill against us, wherein they declared us to 
be delinquents of a very high nature, and had 
thereupon desired to have it enacted, that all our 
spiritual means should be taken away : only there 



HARD MEASURE. lxxix 

should be a yearly allowance to every bishop for 
his maintenance, according to a proportion by 
them set down ; wherein they were pleased that 
my share should come to four hundred pounds 
per annum : this bill was sent up to the lords and 
by them also passed, and hath ever since lain. 
This being done, after some weeks more, finding 
the tower, besides the restraint, chargeable, we 
petitioned the lords that we might be admitted to 
bail, and have liberty to return to our homes. 
The Earl of Essex moved, the lords assented, 
took our bail, sent to the lieutenant of the tower 
for our discharge. How glad were we to fly out 
of the cage ! No sooner was I got to my lodg- 
ing than I thought to take a little fresh air in St. 
James's Park; and in my return to my lodging 
in the Dean's Yard, passing through Westmin- 
ster Hall, was saluted by divers of my parlia- 
ment acquaintance, and welcomed to my liberty, 
whereupon some that looked upon me with an evil 
eye ran into the house, and complained that the 
bishops were let loose, which, it seems was not 
well taken by the house of commons, who pre- 
sently sent a kind of expostulation to the lords, 
that they had dismissed so heinous offenders 
without their knowledge and consent. Scarce 
had I rested me in my lodging when there comes 
a messenger to me with the sad news of sending 
me, with the rest of my brethren the bishops, 



Ixxx BISHOP HALL ? S 

back to the tower again ; from whence we came 
thither must we go ; and thither I went with an 
heavy (but, I thank God, not an impatient) heart. 
After we had continued there some six weeks 
longer, and earnestly petitioned to return to our 
several charges, we were, upon five thousand- 
pound bond, dismissed, with a clause of revoca- 
tion at a short warning, if occasion should require. 
Thus having spent the time betwixt New Year's 
Even and Whitsuntide in those safe walls, where 
we, by turns, preached every Lord's day to a 
large auditory of citizens, we disposed of our- 
selves lo the places of our several abode. 

For myself, addressing myself to Norwich, 
whether it was his majesty's pleasure to remove 
me, I was at the first received with more respect 
than in such times I could have expected ; there 
I preached the day after my arrival to a nume- 
rous and attentive people ; neither was sparing of 
my pains in this kind ever since, till the times 
growing every day more impatient of a bishop, 
threatened my silencing. There, though with 
some secret murmurs of disaffected persons, I 
enjoyed peace till the ordinance of sequestration 
came forth, which was in the latter end of March 
following; then when I was in hopes of receiv- 
ing the profits of the foregoing half year, for the 
maintenance of my family, were all my rents 
stopped and diverted, and in the April following 



HARD MEASURE. Ixxxi 

came the sequestrators, viz. Mr. Southerton, Mr. 
Tooly, Mr. Bawly, Mr. Greenwood, &c. to the 
palace and told me that, by virtue of an ordinance 
of parliament, they must seize upon the palace, 
and all the estate I had, both real and personal, 
and accordingly sent certain men appointed by 
them (whereof one had been burned in the hand 
for the mark of his truth), to apprise all the goods 
that were in the house ; which they accordingly 
executed with all diligent severity, not leaving so 
much as a dozen of trenchers, or my children's 
pictures out of their curious inventory ; yea, they 
would have apprised our wearing clothes, had not 
Alderman Tooly and Sheriff Rawley (to whom I 
sent to require their judgment concerning the or- 
dinance in this point), declared their opinion to 
the contrary. These goods, both library and 
household stuff of all kinds, were appointed to 
be exposed to public sale : much inquiry there 
was when the goods should be brought to the 
market; but in the mean time, Mrs. Goodwin, a 
religious good gentlewoman, whom yet we had 
never known or seen, being moved with compas- 
sion, very kindly offered to lay down to the se- 
questrators that whole sum which the goods were 
valued at; and was pleased to leave them in our 
hands, for our use, till we might be able to repur- 
chase them, which she did accordingly, and had 
the goods formally delivered to her by Mr. Smith 

d3 



lxxxii BISHOP hall's 

and Mr. Greenwood, two sequestrators. As for 
the books, several stationers looked on them, but 
were not forward to buy them : at last, Mr. Cook, 
a worthy divine of this diocess, gave bond to the 
sequestrators to pay to them the whole sum 
whereat they were set, which was afterwards satis- 
fied out of that poor pittance that was allowed me 
for my maintenance. As for my evidences, they 
required them from me ; I denied them, as not 
holding myself bound to deliver them. They 
nailed and sealed up the door, and took such as 
they found with me. 

But before this, the first noise that I heard of 
my trouble was, that one morning, before my 
servants were up, there came to my gates one 
Wright, a London trooper, attended with others, 
requiring entrance, threatening, if they were not 
admitted, to break open the gates ; whom I found, 
at my first sight, struggling with one of my ser- 
vants for a pistol which he had in his hand. I 
demanded his business at that unseasonable time. 
He told me he came to search for arms and am- 
munition, of which I must be disarmed. I told 
him I had only two muskets in the house, and no 
other military provision. He not resting upon 
my word, searched round about the house, looked 
into the chests and trunks, examined the vessels 
in the cellar. Finding no other warlike furni- 
ture, he asked me what horses I had, for his com- 



HARD MEASURE. Ixxxiii 

mission was to take them also. I told him how 
poorly I was stored, and that my age would not 
allow me to travel on foot. In conclusion, he 
took one horse for the present, and such account 
of another, that he did highly expostulate with 
me afterwards that I had otherwise disposed of 
him. 

Now not only my rents present, but the arrerages 
of the former years which I had in favour forborne 
to some tenants, being treacherously confessed 
to the sequestrators, were by them called for and 
taken from me; neither was there any course at 
all taken for my maintenance; I therefore ad- 
dressed myself to the committee sitting here at 
Norwich, and desired them to give order for 
some means, out of that large patrimony of the 
church, to be allowed me. They all thought it 
very just; and there being present Sir Thomas 
Woodhouse and Sir John Pots, parliament men, 
it was moved and held fit by them and the rest, 
that the proportion which the votes of the parlia- 
ment had pitched upon, viz. four hundred pounds 
per annum, should be allowed to me. My Lord 
of Manchester, who was conceived then to have 
great power in matters of the sequestrations, was 
moved herewith. He apprehended it very just 
and reasonable, and wrote to the committee here 
to set out so many of the manors belonging to 
this bishoprick as should amount to the said sum 



lxxxiv BISHOP HALL'S 

of four hundred pounds annually ; which was an- 
swerably done under the hands of the whole table. 
And now I well hoped I should have a good com- 
petency of maintenance out of that plentiful estate 
which I might have had; but those hopes were no 
sooner conceived than dashed ; for before I could 
gather up one quarter's rent there comes down 
an order from the committee for sequestrations 
above, under the hand of Sergeant Wild, the chair- 
man, procured by Mr. Miles Corbet, to inhibit 
any such allowance; and telling our committee 
here, that neither they, nor any other, had any 
power to allow me any thing at all; but if my 
wife found herself to need a maintenance, upon 
her suit to the committee of lords and commons, 
it might be granted that she should have a fifth 
part, according to the ordinance, allowed for the 
sustentation of herself and her family. Here- 
upon she sent a petition up to that committee, 
which, after a long delay, was admitted to be 
read, and an order granted for the fifth part. 
But still the rents and retinues, both of my spiri- 
tual and temporal lands, were taken up by the 
sequestrators, both in Norfolk, and Suffolk, and 
Essex, and we kept off from either allowance or 
account. At last, upon much pressing, Beadle, 
the solicitor, and Rust, the collector, brought in 
an account, such as it was, but so confused and 
perplexed, and so utterly imperfect, that we never 



HARD MEASURE. 1XXXV 

could come to know what a fifth part meant. But 
they were content to eat my books by setting off 
the sum, engaged for them out of the fifth part. 
Meantime the synodals both in Norfolk and Suf- 
folk, and all the spiritual profits of the diocess, 
were also kept back, only ordinations and insti- 
tutions continued a while. But after the cove- 
nant was appointed to be taken, and was gene- 
rally swallowed both by clergy and laity, my 
power of ordination was with some strange vio- 
lence restrained ; for when I was going on in my 
wonted course (which no law or ordinance had 
inhibited), certain forward volunteers in the city, 
banding together, stir up the mayor and aldermen 
and sheriffs to call me to an account for an open 
violation of their covenant. To this purpose di- 
vers of them came to my gates at a very unsea- 
sonable time, and knocking very vehemently, re- 
quired to speak with the bishop. Messages were 
sent to them to know their business; nothing 
would satisfy them but to have the bishop's pre- 
sence. At last I came down to them, and de- 
manded what the matter was. They would have 
the gate opened, and then they would tell me. 
I answered, that I would know them better first : 
If they had any thing to say to me, I was ready 
to hear them. They told me they had a writing 
to me from Mr. Mayor, and some other of their 
magistrates. The paper contained both a chal- 



IxXXVl BISHOP HALl/S 

lenge of me for breaking the covenant and or- 
daining ministers, and withal required me to give 
in the names of those which were ordained by 
me, both then and formerly, since the covenant. 
My answer was, that Mr. Mayor was much abus- 
ed by those who had misinformed him, and drawn 
that paper from him ; that I would the next day 
give a full answer to the writing. They moved 
that my answer might be by my personal appear- 
ance at the Guildhall. I asked them when they 
ever heard of a Bishop of Norwich appearing 
before a mayor; I knew mine own place, and 
would take that way of answer which I thought 
fit, and so dismissed them, who had given out 
that day, that had they known before of my or- 
daining, they would have pulled me, and those I 
ordained, out of the chapel by the ears. Whiles 
I received nothing, yet something was required 
of me ; they were not ashamed, after they had 
taken away and sold all my goods and personal 
estate, to come to me for assessments, and 
monthly payments for that estate which they had 
taken, and took distresses from me upon my just 
denial ; and vehemently required me to find the 
wonted arms of my predecessors, when they had 
left me nothing. Many insolences and affronts 
were in all this time put upon us. One while a 
whole rabble of volunteers came to my gates late, 
when they were locked up, and called for the por- 



HARD MEASURE. lxXXVU 

ter to give them entrance, which being not yielded, 
they threatened to make by force ; and had not 
the said gates been very strong they had done it. 
Others of them clambered over the walls, and 
would come into mine house ; their errand (they 
said) was to search for delinquents. What they 
would have done I know not, had not we, by a 
secret way, sent to raise the officers for our res- 
cue. Another while the Sheriff Toftes and Al- 
derman Linsey, attended with many zealous fol- 
lowers, came into my chapel to look for supersti- 
tious pictures and relics of idolatry, and sent for 
me to let me know they found those windows full 
of images, which were very offensive, and must 
be demolished. I told them they were the pic- 
tures of some famous and worthy bishops, as St. 
Ambrose, Austin, &c. It was answered me, 
that they were popes; and one younger man 
among the rest (Townsend, as I perceived after- 
wards), would take upon him to defend, that 
'every diocesan bishop was pope. I answered 
him with some scorn, and obtained leave that I 
might, with the least loss and defacing of the 
windows, give order for taking off that offence, 
which I did by causing the heads of those pic- 
tures to be taken off, since I knew the bodies 
could not offend. There was not care and mo- 
deration used in reforming the cathedral church 
bordering upon my palace. It is no other than 



Ixxxviii BISHOP hall's 

tragical to relate the carriage of that furious sa- 
crilege, whereof our eyes and ears were the sad 
witnesses, under the authority and presence of 
Linsey, Tofts the sheriff, and Greenwood. Lord, 
what work was here, what clattering of glasses, 
what beating down of walls, what tearing up of 
monuments, what pulling down of seats, what 
wresting out of irons and brass from the windows 
and graves, what defacing of arms, what demo- 
lishing of curious stone work, that had not any 
representation in the world, but only the cost of 
the founder, and skill of the mason, what toting 
and piping upon the destroyed organ pipes, and 
what a hideous triumph on the market day before 
all the country, when, in a kind of sacrilegious 
and profane procession, all the organ pipes,, vest- 
ments, both copes and surplices, together with 
the leaden cross, which had been newly sawn 
down from over the green yard pulpit, and the 
service books and singing books that could be 
had were carried to the fire in the public market- 
place ; a lewd wretch walking before the train, 
in his cope, trailing in the dirt, with a service 
book in his hand, imitating, in an impious scorn, 
the tune, and usurping the words of the Litany, 
used formerly in the church; near the public 
cross all these monuments of idolatry must be 
sacrificed to the fire, not without much ostenta- 
tion of a zealous joy in discharging ordnance to 



HARD MEASURE. Ixxxix 

the cost of some who professed how much they 
had longed to see that day. Neither was it any 
news, upon this Guild day, to have the cathedral 
now open on all sides to be rilled with musketeers, 
waiting for the major's return, drinking and to- 
baccoing as freely as if it had turned alehouse. 
Still I yet remained in my palace, though with 
but a poor retinue and means, but the house was 
held too good for me. Many messages were 
sent by Mr. Corbet to remove me thence; the 
first pretence was, that the committee, who now 
was at charge for a house to sit in, might make 
their daily session there, being a place both more 
public, roomy, and chargeless; the committee, 
after many consultations, resolved it convenient 
to remove thither, though many overtures and 
offers were made to the contrary. Mr. Cor- 
bet was impatient of my stay there, and procures 
and sends peremptory messages for my present 
dislodging. We desired to have some time al- 
lowed for providing some other mansion if we 
must needs be cast out of this ; which my wife 
was so willing to hold that she offered (if the 
charge of the present committee house were the 
thing stood upon), she would be content to de- 
fray the sum of the rent of that house of her 
fifth part; but that might not be yielded ; out we 
must, and that in three weeks warning, by Mid- 
summer Day then approaching ; so as we might 
have lain in the street, for aught I know., had not 



XC BISHOP HALL'S HARD MEASURE. 

the Providence of God so ordered it, that a 
neighbour in the close, one Mr. Gostlin, a wi- 
dower, was content to void his house for us. 

This hath been my measure, wherefore I know 
not, Lord, thou knowest who only canst remedy, 
and end, and forgive, or avenge this horrible op- 
pression. 



JOS. NOHVIC. 



Scripsi, May 29, 
1647. 



VIRGIDEMIARUM. 

FIRST THREE BOOKES 

OF 

TOOTHLESS SATYRS. 

1. POETICAL. 

2. ACADEMICAL. 

3. MORALL. 

WITH THE 

THREE LAST BOOKS 

OF 

BYTING SATYRES. 



LONDON : 



PRINTED BY THOMAS CREEDE, 
FOR ROBERT DEXTER. 

1597. 



THE 

AUTHOR TO THE READER* 



It is not for every one to relish a true and 
natural satire, being of itself, besides the nature 
and inbred bitterness and tartness of particulars, 
both hard of conceit and harsh of style, and 
therefore cannot but be unpleasing both to the 
unskilful and over-musical ear ; the one being 
affected with only a shallow and easy matter, 
the other with a smooth and current disposi- 
tion : so that I well foresee in the timely pub- 
lication of these my concealed satires, I am 
set upon the rack of many merciless and pe- 
remptory censures ; which, sith the calmest and 
most plausible writer is almost fatally subject 
unto, in the curiosity of these nicer times, how 
may I hope to be exempted upon the occasion 

* This in the Original Edition is placed at the End of the 
Volume, 3.nd called " A Postscript to the Reader," but hav- 
ing all the characteristics of a Preface, I have thought best 
to let it precede the Satires. 



XC1V THE AUTHOR 

of so busy and stirring a subject ? One thinks 
it misbeseeming the author, because a poem ; 
another, unlawful in itself because a satire ; 
a third, harmful to others for the sharpness : 
and a fourth, unsatirelike for the mildness : the 
learned, too perspicuous, being named with 
Juvenile, Persius, and the other ancient satires; 
the unlearned, savourless, because too obscure, 
and obscure because not under their reach. 
What a monster must he be that would please 
all! 

Certainly look what weather it would be if 
every almanack should be verified : much what 
like poems if every fancy should be suited. It 
is not for this kind to desire or hope to please, 
which naturally should only find pleasure in 
displeasing : notwithstanding, if the fault find- 
ing with the vices of the time may honestly 
accord with the good will of the parties, I had 
as lieve ease myself with a slender apology, as 
wilfully bear the brunt of causeless anger in 
my silence. For poetry itself, after the so effec- 
tual and absolute endeavours of her honour- 
ed patrons, either she needeth no new defence, 
or else might well scorn the offer of so impo- 
tent ,and poor a client. Only for my own part, 
though were she a more unworthy mistress, I 



TO THE READER. XCV 

tbiiik she might be inoffensively served with 
the broken messes of our twelve o'clock hours> 
which homely service she only claimed and 
found of me, for that short while of my atten- 
dance : yet having thus soon taken my solemn 
farewell of her, and shaked hands with all her 
retinue, why should it be an eyesore unto any, 
sith it can be no loss to myself? 

For my Satires themselves, I see two ob- 
vious cavils to be answered : one concerning 
the matter ; than which I confess none can be 
more open to danger, to envy ; sith faults loathe 
nothing more than the light, and men love no- 
thing more than their faults, and therefore, what 
through the nature of the faults, and fault of the 
persons, it is impossible so violent an appeach- 
ment should be quietly brooked. But why 
should vices be unblamed for fear of blame ? 
And if thou mayest spit upon a toad unve- 
nomed, why mayest thou not speak of vice 
without danger ? Especially so warily as I have 
endeavoured ; who, in the impartial mention of 
so many vices, may safely profess to be alto- 
gether guiltless in myself to the intention of 
any guilty person who might be blemished by 
the likelihood of my conceived application, 
thereupon choosing rather to mar mine own 



XCV1 THE AUTHOR 

verse than another's name: which notwith- 
standing, if the injurious reader shall wrest to 
his own spite, and disparaging of others, it 
is a short answer, Art thou guilty f Complain 
not, thou art not wronged. Art thou guiltless? 
Complain not, thou art not touched. The 
other, concerning the manner, wherein perhaps 
too much stooping to the low reach of the vul- 
gar, I shall be thought not to have any whit 
kindly rattght my ancient Roman predecessors, 
whom in the want of more late and familiar 
precedents, J am constrained thus far off to 
imitate : which thing I can be so willing to 
grant, that I am further ready to warrant my 
action therein to any indifferent censure. First, 
therefore, I dare boldlv avouch that the English 
is not altogether so natural to a satire as the 
Latin ; which I do not impute to the nature of 
the language itself, being so far from disabling 
it any way, that methinks I durst equal it to 
the proudest in every respect; but to that which 
is common to it with all the other common lan- 
guages, Italian, French, German, &c. In their 
poesies the fettering together the series of the 
verses, which the bonds of like cadence or de- 
sinence of rhyme, which if it be unusually ab- 
rupt, and not dependent in sense upon so near 



TO THE READER. XCV11 

affinity of words, I know not what a loathsome 
kind of harshness and discordance it breedeth 
to any judicial ear : which if any more confi- 
dent adversary shall gainsay, I wish no better 
trial than the translation of one of Persius's 
Satires into English ; the difficulty and disso- 
nance whereof shall make good my assertion : 
besides, tl?e plain experience thereof in the 
Satires of Ariosto (save which, and one base 
French Satire, I could never attain the view 7 of 
any for my direction, and that also might for 
need serve for an excuse at least), whose chain 
verse, to which he fettereth himself, as it may 
well afford a pleasing harmony to the ear, so 
can it yield nothing but a flashy and loose con- 
ceit to the judgment. Whereas the Roman 
numbers tying but one foot to another, offereth 
a greater freedom of variety, with much more 
delight to the reader. Let my second ground 
be, the well known dainties of the time, such, 
that men rather choose carelessly to lose the 
sweet of the kernel, than to urge their teeth with 
breaking the shell wherein it was wrapped : and 
therefore sith that which is unseen is almost 
undone, and that is almost unseen which is 
unconceived, either I would say nothing to be 
untalked of, or speak with my mouth open that 

e 



XCV111 TO THE READER. 

I may be understood. Thirdly, the end of this 
pains was a Satire, but the end of my Satire a 
further good, which whether I attain or no I 
know not : but let me be plain with the hope 
of profit, rather than purposely obscure only 
for a bare name's sake. 

Notwithstanding, in the expectation of this 
quarrel, I think my first Satire doth somewhat 
resemble the sour and crabbed face of Juve- 
nal's, which I endeavouring in that, did deter- 
minately omit in the rest, for these forenamed 
causes, that so I might have somewhat to stop 
the mouth of every accuser. The rest to each 
man's censure : which let be as favourable as 
so thankless a work can deserve or desire. 



A DEFIANCE TO ENVY. 



JN ay ; let the prouder pines of Ida fear 
The sudden iires of heaven, and decline 
Their yielding tops that dar'd the skies whilere : 
And shake your sturdy trunks ye prouder pines, 
Whose swelling grains are like begall'd alone, 
With the deep furrows of the thunder- stone. 

Stand ye secure, ye safer shrubs below, 

In humble dales, whom heaven's do not despite ; 

Nor angry clouds conspire your overthrow, 

Envying at your too disdainful height. 

Let high attempts dread envy and ill tongues, 
And cow'rdly shrink for fear of causeless wrongs. 

So wont big oaks fear winding ivy weed : 
So soaring eagles fear the neighbour sun : 
So golden mazer * wont suspicion breed, 
Of deadly hemlock's poisoned potion : 

So adders shroud themselves in fairest leaves : 
So fouler fate the fairer thing bereaves. 



* A mazer was a standing cup, a bowl, or goblet. Philips 
in his World of Words derives the name from M&ser which 



C DEFIANCE TO ENVY. 

Nor the low bush fears climbing ivy twine : 
Nor lowly bustard dreads the distant rays : 
Nor earthen pot wont secret death to shrine : 
Nor subtle snake doth lurk in pathed ways. 
Nor baser deed dreads envy and ill tongues, 
Nor shrinks so soon for fear of causeless wrongs. 

Needs me then hope, or doth me need mis-dreed : 
Hope for that honour, dread that wrongful spite ; 
Spite of the party, honour of the deed, 
Which wont alone on lofty objects light. 

That envy should accost my muse and me, 

For this so rude and reckless poesy. 



in Dutch means maple, of which sort of wood (says he) those 
cups are commonly made. The old dictionaries, however, in- 
terpret Chrysendeta, " Cnps having borders of gold, as our 
mazers and nuts have." Du Cange in his Glossary gives a 
more curious account, of which the following is the substance. 
Mtirrhmum or murreum, the ancient name for the most valu- 
able kind of cups, made of a substance not yet clearly known, 
continued in the darker ages to be applied to those of fine 
glass, which had been at first formed in imitation of the mur- 
rhine. This word, by various corruptions, became mardrinum 
masdrinum, mazerinnm, from which latter mazer was formed. 
The French word madre is supposed to have the same origin ; 
and it is still applied to substances curiously variegated, but 
at first more particularly to the materials of fine goblets. To 
these murrhine cups, I believe, the virtue was attributed 
(which the glass of Venice was afterwards said to possess), 
of manifesting whether the liquor put into them was poisonous 
or no. This seems to account for the application of the term 
to cups of value : but it was also frequently applied to vessels 
of wood. 



DEFIANCE TO ENVY. CI 

Would she but shade her tender brows with bay, 
That now lie bare in careless wilful rage, 
And trance herself in that sweet ecstasy, 
That rouseth drooping thoughts of bashful age. 
(Tho' now those bays and that aspired thought, 
In careless rage she sets at worse than nought.) 

Or would we loose her plumy pinion, 
Manacled long with bonds of modest fear, 
Soon might she have those kestrels * proud outgone, 
Whose flighty wings are dew'd with wetter air, 
And hopen now to shoulder from above 
The eagle from the stairs of friendly Jove. 

Or list she rather in late triumph rear 
Eternal trophies to some conqueror, 
Whose dead deserts slept in his sepulchre, 
And never saw, nor life, nor light before : 
To lead sad Pluto captive with my song, 
To grace the triumphs he obscur'd so long. 

Or scour the rusted swords of elvish knights, 
Bathed in pagan blood, or sheath them new 
In misty moral types ; or tell their fights, 
Who mighty giants, or who monsters slew : 

And by some strange enchanted spear and shield, 
Vanquished their foe, and won the doubtful field. 

* A Kestrel was a hawk of a base unserviceable breed. 



Oil DEFIANCE TO ENVY. 

May-be she might in stately stanzas frame 
Stories of ladies, and advent'rous knights, 
To raise her silent and inglorious name 
Unto a reachless pitch of praises heights, 

And somewhat say, as more unworthy done *, 
Worthy of brass, and hoary marble stone. 

Then might vain envy waste her duller wing, 
To trace the aery steps she spiteing sees, 
And vainly faint in hopeless following 
The clouded paths her native dross denies. 
But now such lowly satires here I sing, 
Not worth our Muse, not worth her envying, 

Too good (if ill) to be expos'd to blame : 

Too good, if worse, to shadow shameless vice. 

Ill, if too good, not answering their name : 

So good and ill in fickle censure lies. 
Since in our satire lies both good and ill, 
And they and it in varying readers' will. 

Witness, ye Muses, how I wilful sung 
These heady rhymes, withouten second care ; 
And wish'd them worse, my guilty thoughts among* 
The ruder satire should go ragged and bare, 
And show his rougher and his hairy hide, 
Tho' mine be smooth, and deck'd in careless pride. 

f Done for doon. 



DEFIANCE TO ENVY. ciii 

Would we but breathe within a wax-bound quill, 
Pan's seven-fold pipe, some plaintive pastoral ; 
To teach each hollow grove, and shrubby hill, 
Each murmuring brook, each solitary vale 
To sound our love, and to our song accord, 
Wearying Echo with one changeless word. 

Or list us make two striving shepherds sing, 
With costly wagers for the victory, 
Under Menalcas judge ; while one doth bring 
A carven bowl well wrought of beechen tree, 
Praising it by the story, or the frame, 
Or want of use, or skilful maker's name. 

Another layeth a well marked lamb, 
Or spotted kid, or some more forward steer, 
And from the pail doth praise their fertile dam;. 
So do they strive in doubt, in hope, in fear, 
Awaiting for their trusty umpire's doom, 
Faulted * as false by him that's overcome. 

Whether so me list my lovely thought to sing, 
Come dance ye nimble Dryads by my side, 
Ye gentle wood-nymphs come : and with you bring 
The willing fawns that mought your music guide, 

Come nymphs and fawns, that haunt those shady 
groves, 

While I report my fortunes or my loves. 

* Faulted, i. e. blamed. 



CIV DEFIANCE TO ENVY. 

Or whether list me sing so personate, 
My striving self to conquer with my verse, 
Speak, ye attentive swains that heard me late, 
Needs me give grass unto the conquerors ? 
At Colin's feet I throw my yielding reed *, 
But let the rest win homage by their deed. 

But now (ye Muses) sith your sacred hests 

Profaned are by each presuming tongue ; 

In scornful rage I vow this silent rest. 

That never field nor grove shall hear my song. 
Only these refuse rhymes I here mis-spend 
To chide the world, that did my thoughts oitend. 

* This is a delicate compliment to Spenser (says Warton), 
after whom he declares his reluctance and inability to write 
pastorals, but these spirited lines show that he was admirably 
qualified for this species of poetry." Do they not rather show 
that he had written pastorals ? Else why should he say : 

" Speak, ye attentive swains that heard me late," 

I do not completely understand the next line, 

" Needs me give grasse unto the conquerors ?" 

To give grass, was probably to yield the palm, but I have 
found no instance of its use. 



SATIRES. 



BOOK I. 



PROLOGUE. 

I FIRST adventure, with fool-hardy might, 

To tread the steps of perilous despite. 

I first adventure, follow me who list, 

And be the second English satirist. 

Envy waits on my back, Truth on my side ; 

Envy will be my page, and Truth my guide. 

Envy the margent holds, and Truth the line : 

Truth doth approve, but Envy doth repine. 

For in this smoothing age who durst indite 

Hath made his pen an hired parasite, 

To claw the back of him that beastly lives, 

And prank base men in proud_superlatives. 

Whence damned vice is shrouded quite from shame, 

And crown'd with virtue's meed, immortal name ! 

Infamy dispossess'd of native due, 

Ordain'd of old on looser life to sue : 

The world's eye bleared with those shameless lies, 

Mask'd in the show of meal-raouth'd poesies. 

Go, daring Muse, on with thy thankless task, 

And do the ugly face of Vice unmask : 

And if thou canst not thine high flight remit, 

So as it mought a lowly satire fit, 

Let lowly satires rise aloft to thee : 

Truth be thy speed, and Truth thy patron be. 



SATIRES. 



BOOK I. 



SATIRE I. 

Nor lady's wanton love, nor wand'ring knight, 
Legend I out in rhimes all richly dight. 
Nor fright the reader with the pagan vaunt 
Of mighty Mahound, and great Termagaunt h 

1 Hall could not intend this as a satire upon Spenser, be- 
cause he has elsewhere paid him the highest compliments ; but 
Mahound and Termagaunt were commonly sworn by in all 
romances of chivalry where wicked Pagans or Saracens are 
introduced. It is more probable that the English Ariosto, 
then recently published by Harrington, is pointed at. Of 
Macone (Mahound or Mahomet), and Trivigante (Terma- 
gaunt), the Saracen divinities, many of our old metrical ro- 
mances make ample mention. Dr. Percy and Dr. Johnson, 
misled by a false etymology in Junius's Lexicon, have made 
a Saxon divinity of Termagaunt ; which opinion Mr. Gifford 
also inclines to in a note on Massinger's Renegado, A. i. S. 1. 
But we have no trace of such a divinity among our Saxon an- 
cestors, and the source of the English Termagant is most pro- 
bably the Tervagant of the French, or the Trivigante of the 
Italian romances. " Trivigante" says a learned writer in the 
Quarterly Review (vol. xxi. p. 515), " whom the predeces- 
sors of Ariosto always couple with Apollino, is really Diana 
Trivia, the sister of the classical Apollo, whose worship, and 

B 2 



4 hall's b. I. 

Nor list I sonnet of my mistress' face, 
To paint some Blowesse 2 with a borrowed grace ; 
Nor can I bide to pen some hungry scene 
For thick-skin ears, and undiscerning eyne. 
Nor ever could my scornful Muse abide 
With tragic shoes her ankles for to hide. 
Nor can I crouch, and writhe my fawning tail 
To some great Patron, for my best avail. 
Such hunger-starven trencher-poetry, 
Or let it never live, or timely die : 
Nor under every bank and every tree, 
Speak rhymes unto my oaten minstrelsy : 
Nor carol out so pleasing lively lays, 
As mought the Graces move my mirth to praise. 
Trumpet, and reeds, and socks, and buskins fine, 
I them 3 bequeath, whose statues wand'ring twine 

the lunar sacrifices which it demanded, had been always pre- 
served among the Scythians." I must confess that I think 
resolute John Florio gives a better account of this terrible 
personage in his World of Words, 1617. " Termigisto, a 
great boaster, quarreller, killer, tamer, or ruler of the uni- 
verse, the child of the earthquake, and of the thunder, the 
brother of death, &c." We here see why this personage was 
introduced in the old moralities, as a demon of outrageous and 
violent demeanour : or, as Bale says, " Termagauntes altoge- 
ther, and very devils incarnate :" and again, " This terrible 
Termagaunt, this Nero, this Pharaoh." Hence Shakspeare's 
Hamlet says, " I would have such a fellow whipt for o'erdo- 
ing Termagant; it outherods Herod." This also accounts 
for the application of the name to a fiery virago in later times. 

2 Blowesse or Blowze, an ordinary quean, a sluttish, coarse, 
red -faced wench, one who is not overnice in her dress. Hence 
the Blousilinda's and Blousibella's of the old ballads. 

3 In this satire, which is not perfectly intelligible at the 
first glance, the author, after deriding the romantic and pas- 



S. 1. SATIRES. 5 

Of ivy mix'd with bays, circlen around, 
Their living temples likewise laurel-bound. 
Rather had I, albe in careless rhymes, 
Check the mis-order'd world, and lawless times. 
Nor need I crave the Muse's midwifery, 
To bring to light so worthless poetry : 
Or if we list, what baser Muse can bide, 
To sit and sing by Granta's naked side ? 
They haunt the tided Thames and salt Med way, 
E'er since the fame of their late bridal 4 day. 
Nought have we here but willow-shaded shore, 
To tell our Grant his banks are left forlore 5 . 

toral vein of affected or mercenary poetasters, leaves heroic 
poetry, pastoral, comedy, and tragedy to the celebrated esta- 
blished masters in those different kinds of composition, such 
as Spenser, Surrey, Sidney, &c. unless he means the classic 
poets, which is not improbable. The imitation from the pro- 
logue of Persius to his satires is obvious. W. 

4 The compliment in the close to Spenser is introduced 
and turned with singular address and elegance. The allusion 
is to Spenser's beautiful episode of the marriage of Thames 
and Medway, then recently published, in the fourth book of 
the second part of the Fairy Queen. But had I, says the poet, 
been inclined to invoke the assistance of the muse, what muse, 
even of a lower order, is there now to be found who would 
condescend to sit and sing of the desolated margin of the 
Cam? The muses frequent other rivers ever since Spenser 
celebrated the nuptials of Thames and Medway. Cam has now 
nothing on his banks but willows, the types of desertion. W. 

5 Forlore is the same as forlorn, abandoned, forsaken. All 
editions print erroneously forlore. 



6 hall's b. i. 



SATIRE II. 

Whilom the sisters nine were vestal maids, 
And held their temple in the secret shades 
Of fair Parnassus, that two-headed hill, 
Whose ancient fame the southern world did fill ; 
And in the stead of their eternal fame, 
Was the cool stream that took his endless name, 
From out the fertile hoof of winged steed : 
There did they sit and do their holy deed, 
That pleas'd both heav'n and earth — till that of 

late — 
(Whom should I fault 6 ? or the most righteous fate, 
Or heaven, or men, or fiends, or aught beside, 
That ever made that foul mischance betide ?) 
Some of the sisters in securer shades 

Defloured were 

And ever since, disdaining sacred shame, 
Doon aught that might their heavenly stock de- 
fame. 
Now is Parnassus turned to a stews 7 , 
And on bay-stocks the wanton myrtle grews ; 
Cytheron hill's become a brothel bed, 
And Pyrene sweet turn'd to a poison'd head 

6 Fault, i. e. blame. 

7 A brothel, a place of infaiiij. 



- S. II. SATIRES. 7 

Of coal-black puddle, whose infectious stain 
Corrupteth all the lowly fruitful plain 8 . 
Their modest stole, to garish looser weed, 
Deck'd with love-favours their late whoredoms' 

meed: 
And where they wont sip of the simple flood, 
Now toss they bowls of Bacchus' boiling blood, 
I marvell'd much, with doubtful jealousy, 
Whence came such litters of new poetry: 
Methought I fear'd lest the horse-hoofed well 
His native banks did proudly overswell 
In some late discontent, thence to ensue 
Such wondrous rabblements of rhymesters new : 
But since, I saw it painted on fame's wings, 
The Muses to be woxen wantonings. 

8 This satire is directed with honest indignation against the 
prostitution of the muse to lewd or obscene subjects. Ovid's 
Art of Love had recently been rendered in a coarse manner, 
and Marlowe had translated Ovid's Epistles, and written his 
erotic romance of Hero and Leander. Shakspeare had also 
published his Venus and Adonis, which had given great of- 
fence to the graver readers of English verse. But it is in the 
Epigrams of Davies and Harrington, and in the ephemeral 
publications of Greene and Nashe, that decency was most 
outraged. The poet had these most flagrant transgressions 
in his eye. Though the first edition of Marston's Pigtnalion's 
Image bears the date of 1598, I cannot but think that Hall 
particularly points at that poem, which is one of Ovid's trans- 
formations heightened with much paraphrastic obscenity. 
Marston was the poetical rival of Hall, whom he often cen- 
sures or ridicules, particularly in his fourth satire, entitled, 
Reactio, in which he paraphrases several of Hall's lines. It 
appears from the 10th satire of Marston's Scourge of Vil- 
lanie, that Hall had caused a severe epigram to be pasted on 
the last page of every copy of Pigmalion that came to the 
booksellers of Cambridge. 



8 hall's B. I. 

Each bush, each bank, and each base apple- 
squire 9 
Can serve to sate their beastly lewd desire. 
Ye bastard poets, see your pedigree 
From common trulls and loathsome brothelry ! 

9 This cant phrase has been erroneously explained as mean- 
ing a pander or pimp. The fact is, that it meant what is in 
modern slang, called a flash-man; a squire of the body had 
the same meaning. It was sometimes, however, used for a 
base wittol, a cuckoldy knave, who would hold the door while 
his wife played the strumpet. All this may be learned from 
that curious little manual, Junius's Nomenclator, by Abraham 
Fleming, 1585, in voce Aquariolus. In the Letting of Hu- 
mours Blood, by S. R. 1611. A pippin-squire is nsedin the 
latter sense. 



SATIRES. 



SATIRE III. 



With some pot-fury, ravish' d from their wit 10 , 
They sit and muse on some "no-Vulgar writ : 
As frozen dunghills in a winter's morn, 
That void of vapours seemed all beforn, 
Soon as the sun sends out his piercing beams, 
Exhale out filthy smoke and stinking steams. 
So doth the base, and the fore-barren brain, 
Soon as the raging wine begins to reign. 
One higher pitch'd doth set his soaring thought 
On crowned kings, that fortune hath low brought : 
Or some upreared, high- aspiring swain, 
As it might be the Turkish Tamberlain u : 

10 This satire is revelled at the intemperance and bombastic 
fury of his contemporary dramatists. W. 

11 Evidently an attack upon Marlowe, who was unfortunately 
distinguished for his dissipated life. He is said to have been 
a player as well as a poet. The tragedy of " Tamburlaine 
the Great; or, the Scythian Sheperd," was represented before 
1588, and published in 1590, and has been generally attri- 
buted to him. It abounds in bombast : " The lunes of Tam- 
burlane are perfect midsummer madness. " Its false splen- 
dour was burlesqued by Beaumont and Fletcher in the Cox- 
comb ; and Pistol borrows two "huff-cap" lines from it in 
K. Henry the Fourth : 

" Holla, ye pamper'd jades of Asia 
What can ye draw but twenty miles a day?" 
" We should in the mean time remember, that by many of the 
most skilful of our dramatic writers, tragedy was then thought 
almost essentially and solely to consist in the pomp of decla- 
mation, in sounding expressions, and unnatural amplifications 
of style." 

B 3 



10 hall's B. I. 

Then weeneth he his base drink- drowned spright, 
Rapt to the threefold loft of heaven hight, 
When he conceives upon his feigned stage 
The stalking steps of his great personage, 
Graced with huff-cap terms and thund'ring threats, 
That his poor hearers' hair quite upright sets. 
Such soon as some brave-minded hungry youth 
Sees fitly frame to his wide-strained mouth, 
He vaunts his voice upon an hired stage, 
With high-set steps and princely carriage ; 
Now swooping 12 in side-robes 13 of royalty, 
That erst did scrub in lousy brokery, 
There if he can with terms Italianate, 
Big-sounding sentences and words of state, 
Fair patch me up his pure iambic verse, 
He ravishes the gazing scaffolders 14 : 

12 Swooping, which Hall generally spells, soouping, is the 
same as sweeping along majestically. Drayton uses it in the 
same sense, speaking of a river : 

"Proud Tamer swoops along with such a lusty train 
As fits so brave a flood." Polyolbion, Song 1. 

Again, in Song 6 : 

" Thus as she swoops along with all that goodly train." 

See Tooke's EIIEA nTEPOENTA, vol. ii. p. 263. 

13 Side-robes are long loose robes, frt>, Saxon ; this word 
was particularly applied to dress. Side-sleeves were long 
loose hanging sleeves. Thus in Ben Jonson's " New Inn," 

" his branch'd cassock, a side sweeping gown." 

" Their cotes be so syde that they be fayne to tucke them up 
when they ride." Fitzherbert 's Boole of Husbandries 

14 Those who sat on the scaffold, a part of the playhouse, 
which answered to our upper gallery. So again, B. iv. S. 2. 

" When a crazed scaffold and a rotten stage 
Was all rich Ninius his heritage." W. 



S. III. SATIRES. 11 

Then certes was the famous Corduban 15 , 

Never but half so high tragedian. 

Now, lest such frightful shows of Fortune's fall, 

And bloody tyrant's rage, should chance appall 

The dead-struck audience, midst the silent rout, 

Comes leaping in a self-misformed lout, 

And laughs, and grins, and frames his mimic face, 

And justles straight into the prince's place; 

Then doth the theatre echo all aloud, 

With gladsome noise of that applauding crowd. 

A goodly hotch-potch! when vile russetings 16 

Are match'd with monarchs, and with mighty 

kings. 
A goodly grace to sober tragic muse, 
When each base clown his clumsy fist doth 

bruise 17 , 
And show his teeth in double rotten row, 
For laughter at his self-resembled show. 
Meanwhile our poets in high parliament 
Sit watching every word and gesturement, 
Like curious censors of some doughty gear, 
Whispering their verdict in their fellow's ear. 

15 Seneca. 

16 Russetings are clowns, low people, whose clothes were 
of a russet-colour. Hence the name of russet or russeting 
given to an apple formerly called a leather-coat in Devonshire. 

" He borrowed on the working days his holy russets oft." 

Warner's Albion s England, p. 95. 
Florio in voce Romagnuolo describes it as a kind of coarse, 
homespun, " sheepes-russet cloth, called frier's cloth, or shep- 
heard 's clothing." 

17 In striking the benches to express applause. W. 



12 hall's b. I. 

Woe to the word whose margent in their scroll 
Is noted with a black condemning coal. 
But if each period might the synod please, 
Ho ! — bring the ivy boughs, and bands of bays. 
Now when they part and leave the naked stage, 
Gins the bare hearer, in a guilty rage, 
To curse and ban, and blame his likerous eye, 
That thus hath lavished his late halfpenny. 
Shame that the Muses should be bought and sold, 
For every peasant's brass, on each scaffold. 



SATIRES. 13 



SATIRE IV. 

Too popular is tragic poesy, 
Straining his tip-toes for a farthing fee, 
And doth beside on rhymeless numbers tread, 
Unbid iambics flow from careless head 18 . 
Some braver brain in high heroic rhymes 
Compileth worm-eat stories of old times : 
And he like some imperious Maronist, 
Conjures the muses that they him assist. 
Then strives he to bombast his feeble lines 

With far-fetch'd phrase ; 

And maketh up his hard-betaken tale 
With strange enchantments, fetch' d from dark- 
some vale, 
Of some 19 Melissa, that by magic doom 
To Tuscan's soil transporteth Merlin's tomb. 
Painters and poets hold your ancient right : 
Write what you will, and write not what you might : 
Their limits be their list, their reason will. 
But if some painter in presuming skill, 

18 Hall seems to have conceived a contempt for blank 
verse ; observing that the English Iambic is written with 
little trouble, and seems rather a spontaneous effusion, than 
an artificial construction. W. 

19 See Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, c. iii. v. 10, and c. xxvi. 
v. 39. The Orlando had just then been translated by Har- 
rington in a most licentious manner. 



14 hall's b. i. 

Should paint the stars in centre of the earth, 
Could ye forbear some smiles, and taunting mirth ? 
But let no rebel satire dare traduce 20 
Th' eternal legends of thy fairy muse, 
Renowned Spenser : whom no earthly wight 
Dares once to emulate, much less dares despight. 
Salust 21 of France, and Tuscan Ariost, 
Yield up the laurel garland ye have lost : 
And let all others willow wear with me, 
Or let their undeserving temples bared be. 

20 The poet here suddenly checks his career, and retracts 
his thoughtless temerity in presuming to blame such themes 
as had been immortalized by the fairy muse of Spenser. W. 

21 Dnbartas. 



SATIRES. 15 



SATIRE V. 

Another, whose more heavy hearted saint 
Delights in nought but notes of rueful plaint, 
Urgeth his melting muse with solemn tears, 
Rhyme of some dreary fates of luckless peers. 
Then brings he up some branded whining ghost, 
To tell how old misfortunes had him toss'd. 
Then must he ban the guiltless fates above, 
Or fortune frail, or unrewarded love. 
And when he hath parbrak'd 22 his grieved mind, 
He sends him down where erst he did him find, 
Without one penny to pay Charon's hire, 
That waiteth for the wand'ring ghosts retire 23 . 

22 To parbrake is to vomit. Thus in Horman's • Vulgaria,' 
1519, " The Egyptians healed all diseases with fastynge 
and castynge, parbrakyng or vomytte." The versus ructari 
of Horace, is rendered to ' belch verses,' by the old trans- 
lators. 

23 This satire is humorously levelled at the whining ghosts 
of the Mirrour for Magistrates, which the unpitying 
poet sends back to hell, without a penny to pay Charon for 
their return over the Stvx. 



16 hall's B. I. 



SATIRE VI. 

Another scorns the homespun thread of 

rhymes, 
Match'd with the lofty feet of elder times : 
Give me the number'd verse that Virgil sung, 
And Virgil's self shall speak the English tongue : 
" Manhood and garboils shall he chant" with 

changed feet, 
And head-strong dactyls making music meet. 
The nimble dactyl striving to outgo, 
The drawling spondees pacing it below. 
The lingering spondees, labouring to delay, 
The breathless dactyls with a sudden stay. 
Whoever saw a colt wanton and wild, 
Yoked with a slow-foot ox on fallow field, . 
Can right areed how handsomely besets 
Dull spondees with the English dactylets 24 ? 

24 Chapman, in bis Hymn to Cynthia, 1595, says, 



sweet poesie 



Will not be clad in her supremacie 

With those strange garments (Rome's hexameters), 

As she is English ; but in right prefers 

Our native robes, put on with skilful hands, 

English heroicks." 

Warton justly observes, that " Hall's own verses on this 
subject are a proof that English verse wanted to borrow no 
graces from the Roman." 



S. VI. SATIRES. 17 

If Jove speak English in a thund'ring cloud, 
" Thwick thwack, and riff raff/' roars he out 

aloud. 
Fie on the forged mint that did create 
New coin of words never articulate 25 . 



25 In this satire Hall laughs at the hexametrical versifi- 
cation of the Roman prosody, so contrary to the genius of our 
language, then lately introduced into English poetry by Stani- 
hurst, the translator of Virgil, who had found imitators of no 
less rank than Spenser and Sidney, not to mention Putten- 
bam, Gabriel Harvey, and others. Nash, in his preface to 
Greene's Arcadia, has also levelled his, shaft at Stanihurst, 
" whose heroical poetry infired, I should say inspired, with 
hexameter furye, recalled to life whatever hissed barbarisme 
hath been buried this hundred yeare; and revived by his 
ragged quill such carterly varietie, as no hedge plowman in a 
countrie but would have held as the extremitie of clownerie." 
Stanihurst in one of his descriptions of a tempest from Virgil 
has the following passage, which Hall ridicules: 

" rounce robble hobble 



Of ruff raff roaring with thwick thwack thurlery bouncing. " 

And in another place, 

" Loud dub a dub tabering with flapping rip rap of Etna." 

In other passages we meet with such expressions as the 
following, " Cockney cupido,' a f dandiprat hopthumb.' We 
have also the blubbering Andromache, whom he describes as 
" stuttering and stammering to fumble out an answer to her 
sweeting, delicat Hector." Other epithets are, ' rufflery 
rumboled,' — ' great bouncing rumbelo thundering.' In short, 
' when Virgil had passed through Stanihurst, it would puz- 
zle all the philosophers of Laputa to extract from what came 
out one particle of what had gone in.' Gabriel Harvev wrote 



18 hall's B. I. 

some hexameter verses, which he entitles Encomium Lauri, 
in which were the following lines : 

" What might I call this tree? A laurell? O bonny laarell, 
Needs to thy bowes will I bow this knee, and vayle my 
bonetto." 

Which Nash thus happily burlesques : 

" O thou wether-cocke, that stands on the top of x\ll Hal- 
low's, 

Come thy waies down if thou darst for thy crowne, and take 
the wall on us." 

"The hexameter verse (says Nash), I graunt to be a gen- 
tleman of an auncient house (so is many an English beggar), 
yet this clyme of ours hee cannot thrive in ; our speech is too 
craggy for him to set his plough in ; hee goes twitching and 
hopping in our language, like a man running upon quagmires, 
up the hill in one syllable and down the dale in another, re- 
taining no part of that stately smooth gate which hee vaunts 
himself with among the Greeks and Latins." 



SATIRES. 19 



SATIRE VII 26 . 

Great is the folly of a feeble brain, 
O'erruled with love, and tyrannous disdain : 
For love, however in the basest breast, 
It breeds high thoughts that feed the fancy best. 
Yet is he blind, and leads poor fools awry, 
While they hang gazing on their mistress' eye. 
The lovesick poet, whose importune prayer 
Repulsed is with resolute despair, 
Hopeth to conquer his disdainful dame, 
With public plaints of his conceived flame. 
Then pours he forth in patched sonettings, 
His love, his lust, and loathsome flatterings : 
As tho' the staring world hang'd on his sleeve, 
When once he smiles, to laugh: and when he 
sighs, to grieve. 

26 The false and foolish compliments of the sonnet writer, 
are the object of the seventh satire. He judges it absurd, 
that the world should be troubled with the history of the 
smiles or frowns of a lady ; as if all mankind were deeply 
interested in the privacies of a lover's heart, and the momen- 
tary revolutions of his hope and despair. W. 

The innumerable quantity of " excellent conceitfull" ama- 
tory sonnets, poured forth at that period, might well call forth 
the animadversion of the satirist; volumes teeming with the 
praises or complaints of the would-be lover and poet to his 
Celia, his Diana, his Diella, &c. But, perhaps, this points 
more particularly to Henry Lok's Love's Complaints, then 
just published, with the Legend of Orpheus and Euridice. 
Lok is thought to be the subject of Hall's satire in other 
places. 



20 hall's b. i. 

Careth the world, thou love, thou live, or die ? 
Careth the world how fair thy fair one be ? 
Fond wit-wal 2T that wouldst load thy witless 

head 
With timely horns, before thy bridal bed. 
Then can he term his dirty ill faced bride 
Lady and queen, and virgin deified : 
Be she all sooty-black, or berry brown, 
She's white as morrows milk, or flakes new blown. 
And tho' she be some dunghill drudge at home, 
Yet can he her resign some refuse room 
Amidst the well known stars : or if not there, 
Sure will he saint her in his Calendar. 



27 This should, apparently, be wittol, a tame cuckold. A 
Saxon word from witan, to know ; or, as Philips says in his 
World of Words, " Wittall, a cuckold that wits all, i.e. 
knows all : i. e. knows that he is so." The Witwall was a 
bird, by some taken for the Green-finch or Canary-bird; 
others relate of it, " that if a man behold it that hath the 
yellow jaundice, he is presently cured and the bird dieth." 
I have not altered the orthography of the word, as it may 
stand for wite-well, i. e. know well. I find Skelton spells 
this word wit-wold. 



SATIRES. 21 



SATIRE VIII 28 . 

Hence, ye profane : mell 29 not with holy things 
That Sion's Muse from Paiestina brings. 
Parnassus is transform'd to Sion hill, 
And Jewry-palms her steep ascents doon fill. 
Now good St. Peter weeps pure Helicon, 
And both the Mary's make a music moan : 
Yea, and the prophet of the heav'nly lyre, 
Great Solomon sings in the English quire ; 
And is become a new-found sonnetist, 
Singing his love, the holy spouse of Christ : 
Like as she were some light skirts of the rest, 
In mightiest inkhornisms 30 he can thither wrest. 
Ye Sion Muses shall by my dear will, 
For this your zeal and far admired skill, 
Be straight transported from Jerusalem, 
Unto the holy house of Bethlehem 31 . 

28 In the eighth Satire he insinuates his disapprobation of 
sacred poetry, and the metrical versions of Scripture, which 
were encouraged and circulated by the Puritans. He glances 
at Robert Southwell's Saint Peter's Complaint, in which the 
Saint neeps pure Helicon, published in 1597, and the same 
writer's Funeral Tears of the two Maries. He then ridi- 
cules Markbain's Sion's Muse, a translation of Solomon's 
Song. W. 

29 Mell, i. e. meddle. 

30 Inlchorn- terms, affected phrases or studied expressions 
that savoured of the ink-born. It was a favourite phrase of 
the old writers, Inkhornisms has the same meaning, the 
word was probably coined by Hall from the former. " Pe- 
daniaggine, used for fond selfe-conceit or idiotism, in using 
ink-pot tearmes or phrases." Florio. 

31 That is, unto the asylum for lunatics, Bethlehem Hos- 
pital. 



22 hall's b. i. 



SATIRE IX. 

Envy, ye Muses, at your thriving mate, 
Cupid hath crowned a new laureat : 
I saw his statue gaily, tired in green, 
As if he had some second Phoebus been. 
His statue trimm'd with the Venerean tree, 
And shrined fair within your sanctuary. 
What, he, that erst to gain the rhyming goal, 
The worn recital-post of capitol, 
Rhymed in rules of stewish ribaldry, 
Teaching experimental baudery ! 
Whiles th' itching vulgar tickled with the song, 
Hanged on their unready poet's tongue 32 . 

32 Warton supposed that this satire pointed at Robert 
Greene, who practised the vices which he so freely displayed 
in his writings : but Greene died three or four years before 
the publication of these satires, and it seems more probable 
that some living writer was aimed at. u But why (says 
Warton) should we be solicitous to recover a name, which 
indecency, most probably joined with dulness, has long ago 
deservedly delivered to oblivion ? Whoever he was, he is 
surely unworthy the elegant lines which open this satire." — 
" The poet proceeds with a liberal disdain, and with an eye 
t,n the stately buildings of the university, to reprobate the 
Muses for this unworthy profanation of their dignity. His 
execration of the infamy of adding to the mischiefs of ob- 
scenity, by making it the subject of a book, is strongly ex- 
pressed. Our poets, too frequently the children of idleness, 
too naturally the lovers of pleasure, began now to be men of 
the world, and affected to mingle in the dissipations and 
debaucheries of the metropolis. To support a popularity of 
character, not so easily attainable in the obscurities of re- 
tirement and study, they frequented taverns, became liber- 



S. IX. SATIRES. 23 

Take this, ye patient Muses ; and foul shame 
Shall wait upon your once profaned name. 
Take this, ye Muses, this so high despite, 
And let all hateful luckless birds of night : 
Let screeching owls nest in your razed roofs, 
And let your floor with horned satyr's hoofs 
Be dinted, and defiled every morn : 
And let your walls be an eternal scorn. 
What if some Shoreditch 3S fury should incite 
Some lust-stung lecher : must he needs indite 

tines and buffoons, and exhilarated the circles of the polite 
and the profligate. Their way of life gave the colour to 
their writings : and what had been the favourite topic of 
conversation, was sure to please when recommended by the 
graces of poetry. Add to this, that poets now began to 
write for hire, and a rapid sale was to be obtained at the 
expense of the purity of the reader's mind/'' The author of 
the Return from Parnassus, 1606, says of Drayton, a true 
genius, " However, he wants one true note of a poet in our 
times, and that is this, he cannot swagger it well in a tavern." 
Harrington has an Epigram on the Venality of Poets. B. i. 
Epig. 40. 

li Poets hereafter for pensions need not care, 
/ Who calls you beggars, you may call them lyers ; 

Verses are grown such merchantable ware, 
\ That now for sonnets sellers are and buyers. " 

33 Shoreditch was one of the outskirts of the town where 
the stews or brothels abounded. Thus in ' The Letting of 
Humours Blood in the Head Vaine.' Satires by S. R. 1600. 

" ■ some coward gull 

That is but champion to a Shoreditch drab." 

And Marston, in his fourth satire of the first book, 

" He'll cleanse himselfe to Shoreditch purity." 

Shoreditch, Southwark, Westminster, and Turnball Street, 
Clerkenwell, were all noted places of the same kind. 



24 hall's satires. b. I. 

The beastly rites of hired venery, 

The whole world's universal bawd to be ? 

Did never yet no damned libertine, 

Nor elder heathen, nor new Florentine 34 , 

Tho' they were famous for lewd liberty, 

Venture upon so shameful villany; 

Our epigrammatarians, old and late, 

Were wont be blamed for too licentiate. 

Chaste men, they did but glance at Lesbia's deed, 

And handsomely leave off with cleanly speed. 

But arts of whoring, stories of the stews, 

Ye Muses, will ye bear, and may refuse? 

Nay, let the Devil and St. Valentine, 

Be gossips to those ribald rhymes of thine. 

34 Peter Aretine. 



SATIRES. 



BOOK II, 



PROLOGUE. 

Or been the manes of that Cynic spright, 

Cloth'd with some stubborn clay and led to light? 

Or do the relique ashes of his grave 

Revive and rise from their forsaken cave? 

That so with gall-wet words and speeches rude 

Controls the manners of the multitude. 

Envy belike incites his pining heart, 

And bids it sate itself with others' smart. 

Nay, no despite : but angry Nemesis, 

Whose scourge doth follow all that doon amiss : 

That scourge I bear, albe in ruder fist, 

And wound, and strike, and pardon whom she list. 



BOOK II. 



SATIRE I 1 . 

For shame ! write better, Labeo, or write none; 
Or better write, or Labeo write alone : 
Nay, call the Cynic but a witty fool, 
Thence to abjure his handsome drinking bowl; 
Because the thirsty swain with hollow hand, 
Convey 'd the stream to wet his dry weasand. 
Write they that can, though they that cannot do : 
But who knows that, but they that do not know, 
Lo ! what it is that makes white rags so dear, 
That men must give a teston for a queare. 
Lo ! what it is that makes goose wings so scant, 
That the distressed sempster did them want : 
So lavish ope-tide causeth fasting lents, 
And starveling famine comes of large expense. 
Might not (so they were pleas'd that been above) 
Long paper-abstinence our dearth remove ? 
Then many a Lollard would in forfeitment, 
Bear paper-faggots o'er the pavement. 

1 This satire is properly a continuation of the last. In it 
our author continues his just and pointed animadversions on 
immodest poetry, and hints at some pernicious versions from 
the Facetiae of Poggius, and from Rabelais, W. 

c 2 



28 hall's b. ii. 

But now men wager who shall blot the most, 
And each man writes. There's so much labour 

lost, 
Thafs good, that's great : nay, much is seldom 

well, 
Of what is bad, a little's a great deal. 
Better is more : but best is nought at all. 
Less is the next, and lesser criminal. 
Little and good, is greatest good save one, 
Then, Labeo, or write little? or write none. 
.Tush ! but small pains can be, but little art, 
To load full dry vats from the foreign mart, 
With folio volumes, two to an ox hide, 
Or else, ye pamphleteer, go stand aside. 
Read in each school, in every margent coted, 
In every catalogue for an author noted, 
There's happiness well given and well got, 
Less gifts, and lesser gains, I weigh them not. 
So may the giant roam and write on high, 
Be he a dwarf that writes not then as I. 
But well fair Strabo, which as stories tell, 
Contrived all Troy within one walnut-shell. 
His curious ghost now lately hither came ; 
Arriving near the mouth of lucky Tame, 
I saw a pismire struggling with the load, 
Dragging all Troy home towards her abode. 
Now dare we hither, if we durst appear, 
The subtile stithy-man that lived whilere : 
Such one was once, or once I was mistaught, 
A smith at Vulcanus' own forge up brought, 



S. 1. SATIRES. 29 

That made an iron chariot so light, 
The coach-horse was a flea in trappings dight. 
The tameless steed could well his waggon wield, 
Through downs and dales of the uneven field. 
Strive they, laugh we : meanwhile the black story 
Passes new Strabo, and new Strabo's Troy. 
Little for great; and great for good; all one: 
For shame ! or better write, or Labeo write none. 
But who conjured this bawdy Poggie's ghost, 
From out the stews of his lewd home-bred coast : 
Or wicked Rablais' drunken re veilings, 
To grace the misrule of our tavernings 2 ? 
Or who put bays into blind Cupid's fist, 
That he should crown what laureats him list ? 
Whose words are those to remedy the deed, 
That cause men stop their noses when they read? 
Both good things ill, and ill things well; all one? 
For shame! write cleanly, Labeo, or write none. 

2 By tavernings, he means the increasing fashion of fre- 
quenting taverns, which seem to have multiplied with the 
playhouses. As new modes of entertainment sprung up, and 
new places of public resort became common, the people were 
more often called together, and the scale of convivial life in 
London was enlarged. From the playhouse they weut to the 
tavern. — W. The ordinaries were also places of great and 
fashionable resort, but the modern reader is now well ac- 
quainted with the habits of the gallants of the time, from the 
admirable picture drawn by the masterly hand of the author 
of the Fortunes of Nigel. One of the chapters of the Gul's 
Hornbook is, " How a gallant should behave himself in a 
tavern. " 



3;) hall's b. ii. 



SATIRE IF. 

To what end did our lavish ancestors 
Erect of old these stately piles of ours ; 
For threadbare clerks, and for the ragged muse, 
Whom better fit some cotes 4 of sad secluse? 
Blush, niggard Age, and be asham'd to see, 
These monuments of wiser ancestry. 
And ye, fair heaps, the Muses' sacred shrines, 
(In spite of time and envious repines) 
Stand still and flourish till the world's last day, 
Upbraiding it with former love's decay. 
Here may you, Muses, our dear sovereigns, 
Scorn each base lordling ever you disdains; 
And every peasant churl, whose smoky roof 
Denied harbour for your dear behoof. 
Scorn ye the world before it do complain, 
And scorn the world that scorneth you again. 
And scorn contempt itself that doth incite 
Each single-sol'd 5 squire to set you at so light. 
What needs me care for any bookish skill, 
To blot white papers with my restless quill : 

3 In this satire, he celebrates the wisdom and liberality of 
our ancestors, in erecting magnificent mansions for the ac- 
commodation of scholars, which jet at present have little 
more use than that of reproaching the rich with their com- 
parative neglect of learning. The verses have much dignity 
and are equal to the subject. W. 

4 Low humble cottages. 

5 Single-soled or single-souled, like single- witted, was used 
by our ancestors to designate simplicity, silliness. It is a 
very ancient expression. Thus in Horman's Vulgaria, 1519, 



S. II, SATIRES. 31 

Or pore on painted leaves, and beat my brain 

With far-fetch thought ; or to consume in vain 

In latter even, or midst of winter nights, 

111 smelling oils, or some still-watching lights. 

Let them that mean by bookish business 

To earn their bread, or hopen to profess 

Their hard got skill, let them alone, for me, 

Busy their brains with deeper bookery. 

Great gains shall bide you sure, when ye have 

spent 
A thousand lamps, and thousand reams have rent 
Of needless papers ; and a thousand nights 
Have burned out with costly candlelights. 
Ye palish ghosts of Athens, when at last 
Your patrimony spent in witless waste, 
Your friends all weary, and your spirits spent, 
Ye may your fortunes seek, and be forwent 6 
Of your kind cousins, and your churlish sires, 
Left there alone, midst the fast- folding briers. 
Have not I lands of fair inheritance, 
Deriv'd by right of long continuance, 

" He is a good sengyll-soul and can do no harm ; est doli ne- 
scius." The commentators on Shakspeare have made strange 
work of this phrase with their conjectures. Romeo says, " O 
single-soled jest, solely singular for the singleness." Decker 
in his Wonderful Year has a " single-sole fidler," And Tay- 
lor the water poet "a single- soaV d gentlewoman of the last 
edition." So in Stephens's World of Wonders, 1607, " I 
will allege some rare examples of simple Sir John's ; that is, 
of such as are not monks but single-soled priests," p. 179. The 
fact is that single and simple were ancient synonymes. 

6 Forwent appears to have been used by Hall for aban- 
doned, neglected. I have not traced the word elsewhere. 



32 HALL'S B. 17. 

To firstborn males, so list the law to grace, 
Nature's first fruits in an eternal race ? 
Let second brothers, and poor nestlings, 
Whom more injurious nature later brings 
Into the naked world ; let them assaine 
To get hard pennyworths with so bootless pain. 
Tush ! what care I to be Arcesilas, 
Or some sad Solon, whose deed-furrowed face 7 , 
And sullen head, and yellow-clouded sight, 
Still on the steadfast earth are musing pight 8 ; 
Mutt'ring what censures their distracted mind, 
Of brainsick paradoxes deeply hath defin'd : 
Or of Parmenides, or of dark Heraclite, 
Whether all be one, or ought be infinite ? 
Long would it be ere thou hast purchase bought 9 , 
Or wealthier wexen by such idle thought. 

7 He concludes his complaints of the general disregard of 
the literary profession, with a spirited paraphrase of that pas- 
sage of Persius, in which the philosophy of Arcesilaus, and 
of the JErumnosi Solones, is proved to be of little use and 
estimation. W. 

8 Pight is set, placed, fixed. It is explained thus by 
Bullokar in his Expositor, 1616. 

9 Purchase here means gain, profit, a sense in which it is 
used by Ben Jonson in his Devil is an Ass, Act i. Sc. i. 

'* 1 will share, sir, 

In your sports only, nothing in your pur chace." 
It is a very old sense of the word, for in the metrical pro- 
phecy attributed to Chaucer it has the same meaning: 

" Lecherie is holdin as privy solas, 

And robberie as he pur ch as (i. e. fair gaiii)." 
So in Shakspeare's first part of King Henry IV. Act ii. Sc. 2. 
" — Give me thy hand, thou shalt have a share in our pur- 
chase, as I am a true man," 



S. II. SATIRES. 33 

Fond fool ! six feet shall serve for all thy store ; 
And he that cares for most shall find no more. 
We scorn that wealth should be the final end, 
Whereto the heav'nly Muse her course dothbend ; 
And rather had be pale with learned cares, 
Than paunched 10 with thy choice of changed fares. 
Or doth thy glory stand in outward glee? 
A lave-ear'd 11 ass with gold may trapped be. 
Or if in pleasure? live we as we may, 
Let swinish Grill 12 delight in dunghill clay. 



10 Paunched is here used for crammed, stuffed, full- 
paunched. 

11 have-eared is lap-eared, long or flap-eared. Hall else- 
where uses laving for lapping or flapping 1 . It is perhaps de- 
rived from Luyvers, which Bullokar explains thongs of leather. 

12 Gryllus is one of Ulysses's companions transformed into 
a hog by Circe, who refuses to he restored to his human 
shape. But perhaps the allusion is immediately to Spenser's 
Fairy Queen, ii. 12. 80. W. 



C 3 



34 hall's b. ii. 

SATIRE III 13 . 

Who doubts ? the laws fell down from heav'n's 

height, 
Like to some gliding star in winter's night? 
Themis, the scribe of God, did long agone 
Engrave them deep in during marble stone, 
And cast them down on this unruly clay, 
That men might know to rule and to obey. 
But now their characters depraved bin, 
By them that would make gain of others' sin. 
And now hath wrong so mastered the right, 
That they live best that on wrong's offal light. 
So loathly fly that lives on galled wound, 
And scabby festers inwardly unsound, 
Feeds fatter with that pois'nous carrion, 
Than they that haunt the healthy limbs alone. 
Woe to the weal where many lawyers be, 
For there is sure much store of malady. 
'Twas truly said, and truly was foreseen, 
The fat kine are devoured of the lean. 
Genus and Species long since barefoot went 14 , 
Upon their ten toes in wild wanderment : 

13 In this third satire of the second book the poet laments 
the lucrative injustice of the law, while ingenious science is 
without emolument or reward. W. 

14 This is an allusion to an old distich, made and often 
quoted in the age of scholastic science : 

Dat Galenus opes, dat Justinianus honores ; 
Sed Genus et Species cogitur ire pedes. 
That is, the study of medicine produces riches, and jurispru- 



S. III. SATIRES. 35 

Whiles father Bartoll 15 on his footcloth rode, 
Upon high pavement gaily silver strow'd. 
Each homebred science percheth in the chair, 
While sacred arts grovel on the groundsel bare. 
Since peddling Barbarisms 'gan be in request, 
!N"or classic tongues, nor learning found no rest. 
The crouching client, with low-bended knee, 
And many worships, and fair flattery, 
Tells on his tale as smoothly as him list, 
But still the lawyer's eye squints on his fist ; 
If that seem lined with a larger fee, 
Doubt not the suit, the law is plain for thee. 
Tho l6 must he buy his vainer hope with price, 
Disclout his crowns 17 , and thank him for advice m . 

dence leads to stations, offices, and honours : while the pro- 
fessor of logic is poor, and obliged to walk on foot. W. 

15 Bartolo, or Bartholus, an eminent professor of the civil 
law who flourished in the fourteenth century. He was ho- 
noured by kings and emperors, and distinguished with the 
epithets of the ' star and luminary of lawyers'-—' the master 
of truth' — ' the guide of the blind' — ' the lanthorn of equity,' 
&c, but he now ranks among the deservedly forgotten quib- 
blers of the middle ages. 

16 Tho, for then, a remnant of the older language often used 
by Spenser, who in common with Hall affected archaisms : 
Warton misinterprets it — yet even, and the Oxford editor 
printed it as a contraction of though* 

" Tho, wrapping up her wreathed stern around, 
Lept fierce upon his shield, and her huge train 
All suddenly about his body wound." F. Q. I. i. 18. 

17 Disclout his crowns, is a humorous way of expressing 
the action of disbursing or taking them out of his bag or 
purse. 

18 The interview between the anxious client and the rapa- 
cious lawyer is drawn with much humour; and shows the 
authoritative superiority and the mean subordination sub- 
sisting betweeu the two characters at the time. 



36 hall's B. II. 

So have I seen in a tempestuous stowre 19 , 
Some brier-bush showing shelter from the show'r 
Unto the hopeful sheep, that fain would hide 
His fleecy coat from that same angry tide : 
The ruthless brier, regardless of his plight, 
Lays hold upon the fleece he should acquite 20 , 
And takes advantage of the careless prey, 
That thought she in securer shelter lay. 
The day is fair, the sheep would far to feed, 
- The tyrant brier holds fast his shelter's meed, 
And claims it for the fee of his defence : 
So robs the sheep, in favour's fair pretence. 

19 Philips in his World of Words explains stours, shocks 
or brunts, which suits very well with the context, and much 
better with the meaning of Spenser in several places than 
distress, tumult, contention, fight, battle, &c. &c. by which 
his editors have explained it. 

20 To acquite, is to discharge, or let go free. 



SATIRES. 37 



SATIRE IV 21 . 

Worthy were Galea to be weigh' d in gold, 
Whose help doth sweetest life and health uphold ; 
Yet by saint Esculape he solemn swore, 
That for diseases they were never more, 
Fees never less, never so little gain, 
Men give a groat, and ask the rest again. 
Groatsworth of health can any leech allot? 
Yet should he have no more that gives a groat. 
Should I on each sick pillow lean my breast, 
And grope the pulse of every mangy wrest ; 
And spy out marvels in each urinal ; 
And rumble up the filths that from them fall ; 
And give a dose for every disease, 
In prescripts long and tedious recipes, 
All for so lean reward of art and me ? 
No horse-leech but.will look for larger fee. 
Meanwhile if chance some desp'rate patient die, 
Com'n to the period of his destiny 
(As who can cross the fatal resolution, 
In the decreed day of dissolution) : 
Whether ill-tenclment, or recureless pain, 
Procure his death ; the neighbours all complain, 
Th' unskilful leech murder'd his patient, 
By poison of some foul ingredient. 

21 In this satire he displays the difficulties and discourage- 
ments of the physician. Here we learn, that the sicJc lady 
and the gouty peer were then topics of ridicule for the sa- 
tirist. W. 



38 hall's b. it. 

Hereon the vulgar may as soon be brought 

To Socrates his poison'd hemlock draught, 

As to the wholesome julep, whose receipt 

Might his disease's ling'ring force defeat. 

If nor a dram of treacle sovereign, 

Or aqua-vitae, or sugar-candian, 

Nor kitchen cordials can it remedy, 

Certes his time is come, needs mought he die. 

Were I a leech, as who knows what may be, 

The liberal man should live, and carle 22 should die. 

The sickly lady, and the gouty peer 

Still would I haunt, that love their life so dear. 

Where life is dear, who cares for coined dross ? 

That spent is counted gain, and spared, loss : 

Or would conjure the chymic mercury, 

Rise from his horsedung bed, and upwards fly ; 

And with glass stills, and sticks of juniper, 

Raise the black spright that burns not with the fire : 

And bring quintessence of elixir pale, 

Out of sublimed spirits mineral. 

Each powder'd grain ransom eth captive kings, 

Purchaseth realms, and life prolonged brings 23 . 

22 Carle, a boor, a countryman ; this and the word churl 
are both derived from the Saxon ceoril a husbandman. 

23 He thus laughs at the quintessence of a sublimated mi- 
neral elixir of life. Imperial oils, golden cordials, and uni- 
versal panacea, are of high antiquity : and perhaps the puffs 
of quackery were formerly more ostentatious than even at 
present, before the profession of medicine was freed from 
the operations of a spurious and superstitious alchemy, and 
when there were mystics in philosophy as well as religion. 
Paracelsus was the father of empiricism. W. 



SATIRES. 39 



SATIRE V 2 *. 



Saw'st thou ever Siquis 25 patch'd on Paul's 

church door, 
To seek some vacant vicarage before ? 
Who wants a churchman that can service say, 
Read fast and fair his monthly homily ? 
And wed and bury, and make christen-souls ? 
Come to the left-side alley of Saint Poules. 
Thou servile fool, why couidst thou not repair 
To buy a benefice at steeple-fair ? 
There moughtest thou, for but a slender price, 
Advowson thee with some fat benefice : 



- 4 This satire levels a rebuke at the Simoniacal traffic for 
livings then openly practised by public advertisement, af- 
fixed to the door of St. Paul's. 

25 Si quis (i. e. if any one), was the first word of adver- 
tisements often published on the doors of St. Paul's. Decker 
says, " The first time that you enter Paules, pass through the 
body of the church like a porter ; yet presume not to fetch so 
much as one whole turne in the middle ile, nor to cast an eye 
upon Siquis doore, pasted and plaistered up with serving- 
mens supplications, &c." Gul's Hornbook. W. 

The Si quis has a more particular reference to ecclesiasti- 
cal matters. A candidate for holy orders who has not been 
educated at the university, or has been some time absent 
from thence, is still obliged to have his intention proclaimed, 
by being hung up in the church where be resided (perhaps 
this is the origin of the Si quis door) ; and if, after a certain 
time, no objection is made, a certificate of his Si quis, signed 
by the churchwarden, is given him, to be presented to the 
bishop when he seeks ordination. 



40 HALL'S B. II. 

Or if thee list not wait for dead men's shoon, 
Nor pray each morn th' incumbent's days were 

doon: 
A thousand patrons thither ready bring, 
Their new-falPn churches to the chaffering ; 
Stake three years stipend ; no man asketh more : 
Go take possession of the church-porch door, 
And ring thy bells ; luck-stroken in thy fist : 
The parsonage is thine, or ere thou wist. 
Saint Fool's of Gotam mought thy parish be 
For this thy base and servile simony. 



SATIRES. 41 



SATIRE VI 



26 






A gentle squire would gladly entertain 
Into his house some trencher-chappelain ; 
Some willing man that might instruct his sons, 
And that would stand to good conditions. 
First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed 27 , 
Whiles his young master lieth o'er his head. 
Second, that he do, on no default, 
Ever presume to sit above the salt 28 . 

26 This is one of the most perspicuous, easy, and, perhaps, 
one of the most humorous satires in the whole collection. It 
exhibits the servile condition of a domestic preceptor in the 
family of an esquire. Several of the satires in this second 
book are intended to show the depressed state of modest and 
true genius, and the inattention of men of fortune to literary 
merit. W. 

27 The truckle-bed was a small bed made to run under a 
larger one, quasi trocle-hed from troclea, a low wheel or cas- 
tor. It was generally appropriated to a servant or attendant 
of some kind. This indulgence allowed to the pupil is the 
reverse of a rule anciently practised in the Universities. In 
the statutes of Corpus Christi College at Oxford, given in 
1516, the scholars are ordered to sleep respectively under 
the beds of the Fellows in a truckle-bed. Much the same 
injunction is in the statutes of Magdalen College, given 1459, 
" Sint duo lecti principales , et duo lectl rotates trookyll beddys 
vulgariter nuncupati" cap. xlv. And in those of Trinity 
College, given 1550, it is called a troccle-bed, which ascer- 
tains the etymology. In The Return from Parnassus, Arno- 
retto says, " When I was in Cambridge, and lay in a trundle 
bed under my tutor," &c. Act ii. Sc. 2. 

28 Towards the head of the table was placed a large and lofty 
piece of plate, the top of which, in a broad cavity, held the 
salt for the whole compauy. One of these stately saltcellars 
is still preserved at Winchester College. In Jonson's Cyn- 



42 hall's b. it. 

Third, that he never change his trencher twice. 
Fourth, that he use all common courtesies ; 
Sit bare at meals, and one half rise and wait. 
Last, that he never his young master beat, 
But he must ask his mother to define, 
How manyjerks she would his breech should line. 
All these observed, he could contented be, 
To give five marks and winter livery. 

thia's Revels it is said of an affected coxcomb, " His fashion 
is, not to take knowledge of him that is beneath him in 
clothes. He never drinkes below the salt." Act. ii. Sc. 2. 
So in Dekker's Gul's Hornbook, " At your twelvepenny or- 
dinary, yon may give any justice of the peace, or young 
knight, if he sit but one degree towards the equinoctial of the 
saltsellar, leave to pay for the wine," &c. In Parrot's 
Springs for Woodcocks, 1613, a guest complains of it as an 
indignity, 

"And swears that he below the salt was sett." 

Lib. ii. Epig. 188. W. 
Mr. Gilford, in a note on Massinger's Unnatural Combat, Act 
iii. Sc. 1, remarks, " It argues little for the delicacy of our 
ancestors, that they should have admitted of such distinc- 
tions at their board ; but, in truth, they seem to have placed 
their guests below the salt for no better purpose than that of 
mortifying them." Mr. Gifford thinks a passage in Nixon's 
Strange Foot Post furnished Hall with his subject; and has 
given the following extract : the writer is describing the mise- 
ries of a poor scholar : " Now for his fare, it is lightly at the 
cheapest table, but he must sit under the salt, that is an axiome 
in such places : — then having drawne his knife leisurably, 
unfolded his napkin mannerly, after twice or thrice wiping his 
beard, if he have it, he may reach the bread on his knife's 
point, and fall to his porrige, and between every spoonful take 
as much deliberation as a capon craming, lest he be out of 
his porrige before they have buried part of the first course in 
their bellies." 



SATIRES, k 43 



SATIRE VII s 9. 

In th' heaven's universal alphabet 

All earthly things so surely are foreset, 

That who can read those figures, may foreshew 

Whatever thing shall afterwards ensue : 

Fain would I know (might it our artist please) 

Why can his tell-troth Ephemerides 

Teach him the weather's state so long beforn, 

And not foretell him, nor his fatal horn, 

^Soy his death's-day, nor no such sad event ; 

Which he mought wisely labour to prevent? 

29 From those who despised learning he makes a transition 
to those who abused it by false pretences. Judicial astro- 
logy is the subject of this satire. He supposes that astrology 
was the daughter of one of the Egyptian midwives, and that 
having been nursed by Superstition, she assumed the garb of 
Science. The numerous astrological tracts, particularly 
called Prognostications, published in the reign of Queen Eli- 
zabeth, are a proof how strongly the people were infatuated 
with this sort of divination. One of the most remarkable 
was a treatise written in the year 1582, by Richard Harvey, 
brother to Gabriel Harvey, a learned astrologer of Cambridge, 
predicting the portentous conjunction of the primary planets, 
Saturn and Jupiter, which was to happen the next year. It 
had the immediate effect of throwing the whole kingdom into 
a most violent consternation. When the fears of the people 
were over, Nash, in his Pierce Penniless, gave a droll ac- 
count of their opinions and apprehensions while this formid- 
able phenomenon was impending; and Elderton, a ballad- 
maker, and Tarleton, the comedian, joined in the laugh. This 
was the best way of confuting the impertinences of the science 
of the stars. True knowledge must have been beginning to 
dawn when these profound fooleries became the objects of 
wit and ridicule. W. 



44 hall's b. ii. 

Thou damned mock-art, and thou brainsick tale 
Of old astrology : where didst thou veil 
Thy cursed head thus long, that so it mist 
The black bronds of some sharper satirist? 
Some doting gossip 'mongst the Chaldee wives, 
Did to the credulous world thee first derive ; 
And Superstition nurs'd thee ever since, 
And publish'd in pr of o under art's pretence : 
That now, who pares his nails, or libs 30 his swine, 
But he must first take counsel of the sign. 
So that the vulgars count for fair or foul, 
For living or for dead, for sick or whole. 
His fear or hope, for plenty or for lack, 
Hangs all upon his new year's almanack. 
If chance once in the spring his head should ach, 
It was foretold: thus says mine Almanack. 
In th' heaven's high street are but a dozen rooms, 
In which dwells all the world, past and to come. 
Twelve goodly inns they are, with twelve fair signs, 
Ever well tended by our star-divines. 
Every man's head inns at the horned Ram, 
The whiles the neck the Black-bull's guest became, 
The arms, by good hap, meet at the wrastling 

Twins, 
The heart, in the way, at the Blue-lion inns. 
The legs, their lodging in Aquarius got; 
That is the Bride-street 31 of the heaven I wot. 

30 Libs, i. e. gelds. 

31 This passage is animadverted upon by Milton in his 
-Apology for Smectyranus, in the following manner: K* Turn- 



S. VII. SATIRES. 45 

The feet took up the Fish with teeth of gold ; 
But who with Scorpio lodg'd may not be told. 
What office then doth the star-gazer bear ? 
Or let him be the heaven's osteler, 
Or tapster some, or some be chamberlain, 
To wait upon the guests they entertain. 
Hence can they read, by virtue of their trade, 
When any thing is miss'd, where it was laid. 
Hence they divine, and hence they can devise, 
If their aim fail, the stars to moralize. 
Demon, my friend, once liversick of love, 
Thus iearn'd I by the signs his grief remove : 
In the blind Archer first I saw the sign, 
When thou receiv'dst that wilful wound of thine ; 
And now in Yirgo is that cruel maid, 
Which hath not yet with love thy love repaid. 
But mark when once it comes to Gemini, 
Straightway fish- whole shall thy sick liver be. 
But now (as the angry heavens seem to threat 
Many hard fortunes and disasters great) 

ing by chance lo the sixth (seventh) satire of his second 
book, I was confirmed ; where having begun loftily in hea- 
ven's universal alphabet, he falls down to that wretched poor- 
ness and frigidity as to talk of Bridge Street in heaven, and 
the ostlers of heaven : and there wanting other matter to 
catch him a heat (for certainly he was on the frozen zone mi- 
serably benumbed), with thoughts lower than any beadle's, 
betakes him to whip the sign posts of Cambridge alehouses, 
the ordinary subjects of freshmen's tales, and in a strain as 
pitiful." Hall supposes the Zodiacal sign Aquarius to be 
in the Bridge Street of Heaven. He alludes to Bridge Street 
at Cambridge, and the signs are those of inns at Cambridge. 



46 hall's SATIRES. B. II. 

If chance it come to wanton Capricorn, 
And so into the Ram's disgraceful horn, 
Then learn thou of the ugly Scorpion, 
To hate her for her foul abusion : 
Thy refuge then the Balance be of right, 
Which shall thee from thy broken bond acquite : 
So with the Crab, go back whence thou began, 
From thy first match, and live a single man. 



SATIRES. 



BOOK III. 



PROLOGUE 1 . 

SOME say my satires over loosely flow 2 , 

Nor hide their gall enough from open show : 

Not, riddle-like, obscuring their intent; 

But, pack-staff plain 3 , utt'ring what thing they meant : 

Contrary to the Roman ancients, 

Whose words were short, and darksome was their sense. 

Who reads one line of their harsh poesies, 

Thrice must he take his wind, and breathe him thrice : 

My Muse would follow them that have foregone, 

But cannot with an English pinion ; 

For look how far the ancient comedy 

Past former satires in her liberty : 

So far must mine yield unto them of old ; 

'Tis better be too bad, than be too bold. 

1 In the prologue to this hook our author strives to obviate the ob- 
jections of certain critics who falsely and foolishly thought his satires 
too perspicuous. Nothing could he more absurd than the notion that 
because Persius is obscure, therefore obscurity must be necessarily one 
of the qualities of satire. If Persius, under the severities of a prescrip- 
tive and sanguinary government, was often obliged to conceal his mean- 
ing, this was not the case with Hall. But the darkness and difficulties 
of Persius arise, in a great measure, from his own affectation and false 
taste. He would have been enigmatical under the mildest government. 
To be unintelligible can never naturally belong to any species of writ- 
ing. Hall of himself is certainly obscure : yet he owes some of his 
obscurity to an imitation of this ideal excellence of the Roman sa- 
tirists. W. 

2 Sunt quibus in satyra videar nimis acer et ultra, &c. Hor. 

3 This proverbial phrase is still in use ; we say, as plain as a pike- 
staff, alluding to the staff of a pike. The old form pack-staff alludes 
to the staff on which a pedler carried his pack. So Marston uses 
' pack-staff rhymes' and a 'pack-staff epithet.' 



BOOK III. 



SATIRE I 1 . 

Time was, and that was term'd the time of gold, 
When world and time were young that now are old 
(When quiet Saturn swayed the Mace of lead, 
And pride was yet unborn, and yet unbred). 
Time was, that whiles the autumn-fall did last, 
Our hungry sires gap'd for the falling mast 

Of the Dodonian oaks 2 . 
Could no unhusked acorn leave the tree 
But there was challenge made whose it might be. 
And if some nice and licorous appetite 
Desir'd more dainty dish of rare delight, 
They scal'd the stored crab 3 with clasped knee, 
Till they had sated their delicious eye : 

1 The opening of this satire, which contrasts ancient parsi- 
mony with modern luxury, is a witty, elegant, and poetical 
enlargement of a shining passage in Juvenal. W. 

2 This hemistich is thus placed in the original. I should 
have thought it a marginal note which had found its way by 
mistake into the text, but that we have several others in the 
course of these satires. 

3 i. e. climbed the stored crab-tree. Delicious eye, in the 
next line, is a hardy poetical licence ; but delicious was for- 
merly used for dainty, 

D 



50 hall's b. hi. 

Or search'd the hopeful thicks of hedgy rows, 
For briery berries, or haws, or sourer sloes : 
Or when they meant to fare the fin'st of all, 
They lick'd oak-leaves besprent with honey-fall. 
As for the thrice three-angled beech nut-shell, 
Or chestnut's armed husk and hid kernell, 
No squire durst touch, the law would not afford, 
Kept for the court, and for the king's own board. 
Their royal plate was clay, or wood, or stone ; 
The vulgar, save his hand, else he had none. 
Their only cellar was the neighbour brook : 
None did for better care, for better look. 
Was then no plaining of the brewer's scape 4 , 
Nor greedy vintner mix'd the strained grape. 
The king's pavilion was the grassy green, 
Under safe shelter of the shady treen. 
Under each bank men laid their limbs along, 
Not wishing any ease, not fearing wrong : 
Clad with their own, as they were made of old, 
Not fearing shame, not feeling any cold. 
But when by Ceres' huswifery and pain, 
Men learn'd to bury the reviving grain, 
And father Janus taught the new-found vine, 
Rise on the elm, with many a friendly twine : 

4 A scape is a trick, shift, or evasion. Thus Donne : 
- Having purposed falsehood, you 



Can have no way but falsehood to be true ! 
Vain lunatic, against these scapes I could 
Dispute and conquer if I woald. 



S. I. SATIRES. 51 

And base desire bade men to delven low, 
For needless metals, then gan mischief grow. 
Then farewell fairest age, the world's best days ; 
Thriving in ill as it in age decays. 
Then crept in pride, and peevish covetise 5 , 
And men grew greedy, discordous, and nice 6 . 
Now man, that erst hail-fellow was with beast, 
Woxe on to ween himself a God at least. 
No any fowl can take so high a flight, 
Tho' she her daring wings in clouds have dight ; 
Nor fish can dive so deep in yielding sea, 
Though Thetis self should swear her safety 7 ; 
Nor fearful beast can dig his cave so low, 
All could he further than earth's centre go ; 
As that the air, the earth, or ocean, 
Should shield them from the gorge of greedy man. 
Hath utmost Inde aught better than his own ? 
Then utmost Inde is near and rife 8 to gone. 
O nature ! was the world ordain'd for nought 
But fill man's maw, and feed man's idle thought ? 
Thy grandsires' words savour 'd of thrifty leeks, 
Or manly garlick ; but thy furnace reeks 
Hot steams of wine ; and can aloof descry 
The drunken draughts of sweet autumnity. 

5 Peevish covetise is foolish covetousness. 

6 Nice here signifies effeminate, wanton, fantastical. 

7 Safety is frequently used as a trisyllable by Hall's con- 
temporaries. 

8 Rife to gone, i. e. frequent gone to, or gone to com- 
monly. 

D 2 



52 hall's B. III. 

They naked went ; or clad in ruder hide, 

Or home-spun russet, void of foreign pride : 

But thou canst mask in garish gaudery, 

To suit a fool's far-fetched livery. 

A French head join'd to neck Italian : 

Thy thighs from Germany, and breast from Spain : 

An Englishman in none, a fool in all : 

Many in one, and one in several. 

Then men were men ; but now the greater part 

Beasts are in life, and women are in heart. 

Good Saturn self, that homely emperor, 

In proudest pomp was not so clad of yore, 

As is the under-groom of the ostlery, 

Husbanding it in work-day yeomanry. 

Lo ! the long date of those expired days, 

Which the inspired Merlin's word fore-says ; 

When dunghill peasants shall be dight 9 as kings, 

Then one confusion another brings : 

Then farewell fairest age, the world's best days, 

Thriving in ill as it in age decays. 

9 Dight, i. e. decked, adorned. 



SATIRES. 53 



SATIRE II 10 . 

Great Osmond knows not how he shall be known 
When once great Osmond shall be dead and gone : 
Unless he rear up some rich monument, 
Ten furlongs nearer to the firmament. 
Some stately tomb he builds, Egyptian wise, 
Rex Regum written on the pyramis. 
Whereas great Arthur lies in ruder oak 11 , 
That never felt none but the feller's stroke. 
Small honour can be got with gaudy grave ; 
Nor it thy rotten name from death can save. 
The fairer tomb, the fouler is thy name ; 
The greater pomp procuring greater shame. 
Thy monument make thou thy living deeds ; 
No other tomb than that true virtue needs. 
What ! had he nought whereby he might be known 
But costly pilements of some curious stone ? 

10 One of the vanities of the age of Elizabeth was the erec- 
tion of monuments equally costly and cumbersome, charged 
with a waste of capricious decorations, and loaded with su- 
perfluous and disproportionate sculpture. They succeeded to 
the rich solemnity of the Gothic shrine, which yet, amid pro- 
fusion of embellishments, preserved uniform principles of 
architecture. In this satire the author moralizes on these 
empty memorials, which were alike allotted to illustrious or 
infamous characters. W. 

11 He alludes to the discovery of Ring Arthur's body in 
Glastonbury Abbey. In digging up a burrow, or tumulus, 
on the downs near Dorchester a few years since, the body of 
a Danish chief, as it seemed, was found in the hollow trunk 
of a large oak for a coffin. W. 



54 hall's b. hi. 

The matter nature's, and the workman's frame ; 
His purse's cost : where then is Osmond's name? 
Deserv'dst thou ill ! well were thy name and thee, 
Wert thou inditched in great secrecy ; 
Whereas no passenger might curse thy dust, 
Nor dogs sepulchral sate their gnawing lust. 
Thine ill deserts cannot be grav'd with thee, 
So long as on thy grave they engraved be *. 

* The reader may be pleased to see Bishop Hall's thoughts 
on this subject in his eloquent prose. "A man's best monu- 
ment is his virtuous actions. Foolish is the hope of immor- 
tality and future praise by the cost of a senseless stone ; 
when the passenger shall only say, ' here lies a fair stone 
and a filthy carcass.' That only can report thee rich ; but 
for other praises, thyself must build thy monument alive, 
and write thy own epitaph in honest and honourable actions ; 
which are so much more noble than the other, as living men 
are better than dead stones. Nay, I know not if the other 
be not the way to work a perpetual succession of infamy, 
whiles the censorious reader, upon occasion thereof, shall 
comment upon thy bad life ; whereas in this every man's 
heart is a tomb, and every man's tongue writeth an epitaph 
upon the well-behaved. Either I will procure me such a 
monument to be remembered by, or else it is better to be in- 
glorious than infamous." 

Meditations and Vows, Century J. 69. 



SATIRES. 55 



SATIRE III 12 . 



The courteous citizen bade me to his feast, 

With hollow words, and overly 13 request: 

" Come, will ye dine with me this holiday?" 

I yielded, though he hop'd I would say nay : 

For had I maiden' d it, as many use ; 

Loath for to grant, but leather to refuse. 

" Alack, sir, I were loath — another day, — 

I should but trouble you ; — pardon me, if you may." 

No pardon should I need; for, to depart 

He gives me leave, and thanks too, in his heart. 

Two words for money, Darby shirian wise ; 

(That's one too many) is a naughty guise. 

Who looks for double biddings to a feast, 

May dine at home for an importune guest. 

I went, then saw, and found the great expense; 

The fare and fashions of our citizens. 



12 This satire contains a description of a citizen's feast, to 
which he was invited out of hollow courtesy. The great pro- 
fusion of the entertainment was not the effect of liberality, 
but a hint that no second invitation must be expected. The 
effort was too great to be repeated. The guest who dined at 
this table often had only a single dish. W. 

13 Overly is slight, superficial. Thus Baret in his Alvea- 
rie, 1575, u Perfunctorie istud facis ; Thou doest this overlie, 
or onely for an outward shew." Hall uses the word again 
in his Quo Vadis ? " So have we seen an hauke cast off an 
heron-shaw to looke and flie quite another way, and after 
many carelesse and overly fetches, to towre up to the prey 
intended. " 



56 hall's b. hi. 

Oh, Cleopatrical ! what wanteth there 
For curious cost, and wondrous choice of cheer ? 
Beef, that erst Hercules held for finest fare; 
Pork for the fat Boeotian, or the hare 
For Martial ; fish for the Venetian ; 
Goose-liver for the licorous Homan, 
Th' Athenian's goat; quail, Iolan's cheer; 
The hen for Esculape, and the Parthian deer ; 
Grapes for Arcesilas, figs for Plato's mouth, 
And chestnuts fair for Amarillis' tooth. 
Hadst thou such cheer ? wert thou ever there before? 
Never. — I thought so : nor come there no more. 
Come there no more ; for so meant all that cost : 
Never hence take me for thy second host. 
For whom he means to make an often guest, 
One dish shall serve ; and welcome make the rest* 



SATIRES. 57 



SATIRE IV 14 . 

Were yesterday Polemon's natal s kept, 
That so his threshold is all freshly steept 
With new-shed blood ? Could he not sacrifice 
Some sorry morkin 15 that unbidden dies; 
Or meagre heifer, or some rotten ewe ; 
But he must needs his posts with blood embrew, 
And on his way-door fix the horned head, 
With flowers and with ribands garnished ? 
Xow shall the passenger deem the man devout. 
What boots it be so, but the world must know't? 
O the fond boasting of vainglorious man ! 
Does he the best, that may the best be seen ? 
Who ever gives a pair of velvet shoes 
To th' Holy Rood 16 , or liberally allows 

14 This satire is an arraignment of ostentatious piety, and 
of those who strove to push themselves into notice and esteem 
by petty pretensions. The illustrations are highly humo- 
rous. W. 

15 A morlcin is an animal that dies by mischance or sick- 
ness. Philips says, a deer : others, any mild animal. Mott- 
ling seems to have had the same meaning. But the Danish, 
Swedish, and Icelandic languages have a similar word to 
morlcin to signify rotten, putrid ; and a mauk is a maggot in 
some northern counties. 

16 In a gallery over the screen at entering the choir (called 
the rood-loft) was a large crucifix or rood, with the images 
of the Holy Virgin and Saint John. The velvet shoes were 
for the feet of Christ on the cross, or of one of the attendant 
figures. A rich lady sometimes bequeathed her wedding- 
gown, with necklace and ear-rings, to dress up the Virgin 
Mary, W. 

D 3 



$8 hall's B. III. 

But a new rope to ring the curfew bell, 
But he desires that his great deed may dwell, 
Or graven in the chancel window glass, 
Or in the lasting tomb of plated brass ? 
For he that doth so few deserving deeds, 
'Twere sure his best sue for such larger meeds. 
Who would inglorious live, inglorious die, 
And might eternize his name's memory ? 
And he that cannot brag of greater store, 
Must make his somewhat much, and little more. 
Nor can good My son wear on his left hond, 
A signet ring of Bristol diamond, 
But he must cut his glove to show his pride, 
That his trim jewel might be better spy'd: 
And, that men mought some burgess 17 him repute, 
With satin sleeves hath grac'd his sackcloth suit. 

17 i. e. some rich citizen. 



SATIRES. 59 



SATIRE V 18 . 

Fie on all court'sy and unruly winds, 
Two only foes that fair disguisement finds. 
Strange curse ! but fit for such a fickle age, 
When scalps are subject to such vassalage. 
Late travelling along in London way, 
Me met, as seem'd by his disguis'd array, 
A lusty courtier, whose curled head 
With abron 19 locks was fairly furnished. 

18 The author here presents us with a droll portrait of a 
seemingly lustie courtier, or fine gentleman, whose periwin- 
kle, or peruke, was suddenly blown off by a boisterous puff 
of wind while he was making his bows. W. 

19 i. e. auburn. Light auborne, Subflavus ; Un peu jaulne, 
says Baret. And under " feather" that worthy lexicographer 
has the following apposite illustration of the fashionable folly 
here ridiculed. " Pluma," says he, " A feather worne in 
hatts or caps, and also the curled bush of frizzled hearewliere- 
with LUSTY GALLANTS of late would seeme to counterfaite this 
jolly feather, were so strange novelties in old time, and so un- 
acquainted among the ancient writers, that there is no proper 
Latin or Greek worde left in their bookes that I can finde for 
their commendacion. Belike they thought them so vaine 
thinges that they* were not woorthy to have any laudable 
mention or memory made of them in their grave warkes. St. 
Paule, suerly, 2 Tim. ii, and Pet. i. 3, very vehemently in- 
veigheth against the broyded and crisped lockes : accompt- 
ing them Inverecundos that use to weare the same. Plautus 
also, in Asinaria, calleth these frizled fellowes Cinaedos Ca- 
lamistratos, i. e. riotous and wanton dauncers, in great deri- 
sion. And as this fine frizled heare is more fit for women 
then for modest men : so the wearing of a feather, methinke, 
of both is more tolerable in warriors than women. For it 
hath some shew of valiant courage in capitaines and lusty 



60 hall's b. hi. 

I him saluted in our lavish wise : 

He answers my untimely courtesies. 

His bonnet vail'd, ere ever he could think, 

The unruly wind blows off his periwinke. 

He lights and runs, and quickly hath him sped, 

To overtake his overrunning head. 

The sportful wind, to mock the headless man, 

Tosses apace his pitch'd Rogerian 20 : 

And straight it to a deeper ditch hath blown ; 

There must my yonker fetch his waxen crown. 

I look'd and laugh'd, whiles in his raging mind, 

He curs d all court* sy and unruly ivind. 

I look'd and laugh'd, and much I marvelled, 

To see so large a causeway in his head, 

And me bethought, that when it first begon, 

'Twas some shrewd autumn that so bar 'd the bone. 

Is't not sweet pride, when men their crowns must 

shade, 
With that which jerks the hams of every jade, 
Or floor-strewed locks from off the barber's shears ? 
But waxen crowns well 'gree with borrow'd hairs. 

souldiours, but in women it smelleih somewhat of vanitie,'' 
&c. Sir John Harington has an Epigram, b. i. 66, on Galla's 
goodly periwigge. And there are two others to Periwiggians 
in Hajman's Quodlibets, 1628. 

20 As a Gregorian was a species of wig or peruque, so a 
Rogerian appears to have been a nickname for a false scalp 
The Corona veneris f proceeding from a certain disease, is a 
perpetual source of jocularity to our old writers, under the 
ziame of a French crown. 



SATIRES. G\ 

SATIRE VI 21 . 

When Gullion died (who knows not Gullion) ? 
And his dry soul arriv'd at Acheron, 
He fair besought the ferryman of hell, 
That he might drink to dead Pantagruel. 
Charon was afraid lest thirsty Gullion, 
Would have drunk dry the river Acheron. 
Yet last consented for a little hire, 
And down he dips his chops deep in the mire, 
And drinks, and drinks, and swallows in the stream, 
Until the shallow shores all naked seem. 
Yet still he drinks, nor can the boatman's cries, 
Jfor crabbed oars, nor prayers make him rise. 
So long he drinks, till the black caravell 22 , 
Stands still fast gravelPd on the mud of hell. 
There stand they still, nor can go, nor retire, 
Though greedy ghosts quick passage did require. 
Yet stand they still, as though they lay at rode, 
Till Gullion his bladder would unload. 
They stand, and wait, and pray for that good hour ; 
Which, when it came, they sailed to the shore. 
But never since dareth the ferryman, 
Once entertain the ghost of Gullion. 
Drink on, dry soul, and pledge, sir, Gullion : 
Drink to all healths, but drink not to thine own. 
Desunt nonnulla. 

21 This satire is levelled at drunkards in general. The 
fable of the thirsty Ghost of Gullion drinking the river Ache- 
ron dry is told with considerable humour. 

22 A caravell was a swift, light, round vessel, with a square 
poop, rigged and fitted out like a galley. 



62 hall's b. hi. 



SATIRE VII 23 . 

See st thou how gaily my young master goes, 
Vaunting himself upon his rising toes ; 
And pranks his hand upon his dagger's side ; 
And picks his glutted teeth since late noontide ? 
'Tis Ruffio : Trow'st thou where he din'd to-day ? 
In sooth I saw him sit with Duke Humfray 24 . 

23 The figure of a famished gallant, or beau, in this satire, 
is much better drawn than in any of the old comedies. His 
hand is perpetually on the hilt of his rapier. He picks his 
teeth, but has dined with Duke Humphrey, who keeps open 
house for every straggling cavalier, where the dinners are 
long and enlivened with music, and where many a gay youth, 
with a high plumed hat, chooses to dine much rather than to 
pay his shilling, He is so emaciated for want of eating, that 
his sword belt hangs loose over his hip, the effect of hunger 
and heavy iron. Yet he is dressed in the height of the fashion. 
He pretends to have been at the conquest of Cales (Cadiz), 
where the nuns worked his bonnet. His hair stands upright 
in the French style, with one lock hanging low on his shoul- 
ders, which, the satirist adds, puts in mind of a native cord, 
the truly English rope which he will one day wear. W. 

24 The phrase of dining with Duke Humphrey, which is 
still current, originated in the following manner. In the 
body of old Saint Paul's was a huge and conspicuous monu- 
ment of Sir John Beauchamp, buried in 1358, son of Guy, 
and brother of Thomas Earl of Warwick. This, by a vulgar 
mistake, was at length called the tomb of Humphrey Duke 
of Gloucester, who was really buried at Saint Alban's, where 
his magnificent shrine now remains. The middle aisle of 
Saint Paul's is called the Duke's gallery, in a chapter of the 
Gul's Hornebook, — " How a gallant should behave himself 
in Powles Walkes." Of the humours of this famous ambu- 
latory, the general rendezvous of the busy and the idle of all 
classes who found it convenient to frequent the most fashion- 
able crowd in London, a more particular description may be 



S. VII. SATIRES. 63 

Many good welcomes, and much gratis cheer, 
Keeps he for every straggling cavalier. 
An open house, haunted with great resort ; 
Long service mix'd with musical disport. 
Many fair yonker with a feather'd crest, 
Chooses much rather be his shot-free guest, 

seen in Dekker's Dead Terme, or Westminster's Complaint 
for long Vacations and short Termes, 1608, under the chap- 
ter, Pawle's Steeple's Complaint. A humorous poem was 
published in 1674, by Sam. Speed, entitled, " The Legend of 
his Grace Humphrey Duke of St. Paul's Cathedral Walk, 
Surveyor of the Monuments and Tombs of Westminster and 
the Temple, Patron to the Perambulators in the Piazzas in 
Covent Garden, Master of King's Bench Hall, and one of the 
Colleges Honourable Privy Council ;" in which the shifts of 
the needy and idle loungers are humorously depicted. In 
the following passage he seems to have imitated Hall : 

Nor doth the Duke his invitation send 
To princes, or to those that on them tend, 
But pays his kindness to an hungry maw ; 
His charity's his reason and his law. 
Shall any mortal then that knows averse 
Withdraw his pen his bounty to rehearse? 
How many poor distressed knights has he 
Freely relieved in their necessity ! 
How open is his table unto all, 
To those that come without or with a call ! 
Nay which is more, his genius so is bent, 
He'd ne'er admit one penny should be spent! 
For, to say truth, Hunger hath hundreds brought 
To dine with him, and all not worth a groat. 
Some with their beads unto a pillar crowd ; 
Some mutter forth, some say their graces loud ; 
Some on Devotion came to feed their Muse ; 
Some came to sleep, or walk, or talk of news. 
For though they came to dine, they loathed meat ; 
For many had almost forgot to eat." 

He Jhen proceeds to describe the guests. From this poem 



64 HALI/S B. III. 

To fare so freely with so little cost, 
Than stake his twelvepence to a meaner host. 
Hadst thou not told me, I should surely say 
He touch'd no meat of all this livelong- day. 
For sure methought, yet that was but a guess, 
His eyes seem sunk for very hollowness, 
But could he have (as I did it mistake) 
So little in his purse, so much upon his back? 
So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt, 
That his gaunt gut no too much stuffing felt. 
Seest thou how side 25 it hangs beneath his hip? 
Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip. 
Yet for all that, how stiffly struts he by, 
All trapped in the new found bravery. 



it appears, that when the fire of London had burnt down St. 
Paul's, Westminster Abbey became the place of resort. The 
guests, on separating, had agreed to come again : — 

But ere that happy day was fully grown, 

A dreadful fire consumes the kitchen down : 

Which fire began not in his grace's house, 

But thither came, and burnt both rat and mouse. 

On which the Duke, to shun a scorching doom, 

Perambulated to Ben Jonson's tomb, 

Where Shakspeare, Spenser, Camden, and the rest, 

Once rising suns are now set in the west ; 

But still their lustres do so brightly shine 

That they invite our worthies there to dine; 

Where their moist marbles seem for grief to weep 

That they, but stone, should sacred reliques keep : 

And some have fancied that they've heard them sing, 

Within this place is Aganippe's spring, 

There our ingenious train have thought it fit 

To change their diet and to dine on wit." 



25 i. e. Long, or loose. 



S. VII. SATIRES. 65 

The nuns of new-won Cales his bonnet lent, 

In lieu of their so kind a conquerment. 

What needed he fetch that from farthest Spain, 

His grandam could have lent with lesser pain ? 

Though he, perhaps, ne'er pass'd the English shore, 

Yet fain would counted be a conqueror. 

His hair, Frenchlike, stares on his frighted head, 

One lock amazonlike disheveled 26 , 



26 The love-locks, which afterwards called forth such bitter 
invective at the hands of the Puritanic Prjnne, were then in 
high fashion. So, in Lily's Midas, Act. iii. Sc. 2, "Your 
love-locks wreathed with a silken twist, or shaggie to fall on 
your shoulders." Sir John Davies, in one of his Epigrams, 
describes one of these same fine fashionmongers, and there 
are several points of resemblance, 

" And still the newest fashion he doth get, 
And with the time doth change from that to this : 
He wears a hat now of the flat crowne blocke, 
The treble ruffes, long cloke, and dublet French \ 
He takes tobacco, and doth wear a locke, 
And wastes more time in dressing than a wench/' 

Epigram 22. In Ciprum. 

This hanging lock was called the French lock. In the Let- 
ting of Humors Blood in the Heade Vaine, 1612, Epi- 
gram 27. 

Aske Humor why a feather he doth weare, 
Or what he doth with such a horsetail locke. 

So in Perrot's Springes for Woodcockes, 1613, L. i, Ep. 1. 
Of a Beau. 

And on his shoulder weares a dangling locke. 
And in The Returne from Parnassus, Act iii. Sc. 2. 

Must take tobacco and must weare a locke. 

Barnabe Rich says : " Some by wearing a long locke that 
hangs dangling by his eare, do think by that lousie commodity 
to be esteemed by the opinion of foolery/' Opinion Deified, 



66 hall's b. hi. 

As if lie meant to wear a native cord, 

If chance his fates should him that bane afford. 

All British bare upon the bristled skin, 

Close notched is his beard both lip and chin; 

His linen collar labyrinthian set 27 , 

Whose thousand double turnings never met : 

His sleeves half hid with elbow-pinionings, 

As if he meant to fly with linen wings. 

But when I look, and cast mine eyes below, 

What monster meets mine eyes in human show ? 



1613, p. 53. The reader will remember Dogberry's pleasant 
mistake about " One Deformed who wears a key in his ear, 
and a lock hanging by it," 

Much Ado about Nothing, Act v. Sc. 1. 

27 The fashion of wearing collars, or ruffs, of lawn or fine 
linen, set into intricate plaits by means of an implement called 
& poking stick, was then prevalent with the beaux, as well as 
the belles, of the time. The reader must be familiar with 
the nature of this ornamental part of dress from representa- 
tions in old pictures and prints. To set a ruff, as it is some- 
times represented, in labyrinthian folds, must have required 
no mean degree of skill in the operator. Stubbes, in his 
Anatomy of Abuses, ascribes the invention to the devil, and 
tells a tremendous story of a young lady who, being dissa- 
tisfied with her ruff, the devil appears to her in likeness of a 
handsome young man to set it for her, after which he kissed 
her, and destroyed her in the most wretched manner. The 
story at length is in a note to Greene's Tu Quoque in Dods- 
ley's old plays, vol. vii. p. 19. The effeminacy of a man's 
ruff being nicely plaited is well ridiculed in the Nice Valour 
of Beaumont and Fletcher : 

" For how ridiculous wert to have death come 
And take a fellow pinn'd up like a mistress ! 
About his neck a rw^like a pinch'd lantern 
Which schoolboys make in winter." 



S. VII. SATIRES. 67 

So slender waist with such an abbot's loin 28 , 
Did never sober nature sure conjoin. 
Lik'st a strawne scarecrow in the new-sown field, 
Rear'd on some stick the tender corn to shield. 
Or if that semblance suit not every deal, 
Like a broad shak-fork with a slender steale 29 . 
Despised nature suit them once aright, 
Their body to their coat, both now misdight. 
Their body to their clothes might shapen be, 
That nill their clothes shape to their bodie. 
Meanwhile I wonder at so proud a back, 
Whiles th' empty guts loud rumblen for long lack : 
The belly envieth the back's bright glee, 
And murmurs at such inequality. 

28 This alludes to the ridiculous fashion of trunk hose, as 
the preposterous, round, swelling breeches then in fashion 
were called. They are ridiculed in the old play of Damon 
and Pithias: and in the following passage of Wright's Pas- 
sions of the Minde, 1601 : "Sometimes I have seene Tarle- 
ton play the clowne, and use no other breeches than such 
sloppes or slivings as now many gentlemen weare ; they are 
almost capable of a bushel of wheate, and if they bee of sacke- 
cloth they would serve to carriemawlt to the mill. This ab- 
surde, clownish, and unseemly attire only by custome now is 
not mislikev 1 , but rather approved." 

29 A broad shak-fork with a slender steale was a broad hay 
fork, a fork for shaking out grass, now called a pitch-fork ; a 
slender steale was a slender handle ; fcele, Saxon, being the 
handle or stem of any thing. Thus Hastile is interpreted by 
Fleming in his Nomenclator, A speare-staff, or the staffe and 
stale of a javelin. " Steele (says Philips), a term in archery ; 
it signifies the body of an arrow, or shaft made of wood." 
Ascham uses it in this sense : in Barnabie Gouge's transla* 
tion of Heresbachius's Husbandry we have it for stalk. 
" The stalke or steale thereof (i. e. of barley) is smaller than 
the wheate stalke, taller and stronger." 



68 hall's satires. B. III. 

The back appears unto the partial eyne, t 
The plaintive belly pleads they bribed been : 
And he, for want of better advocate, 
Doth to the ear his injury relate. 
The back, insulting o'er the belly's need, 
Says, thou thyself, I others' eyes must feed. 
The maw, the guts, all inward parts complain 
The back's great pride, and their own secret pain. 
Ye witless gallants, I beshrew your hearts, 
That sets such discord 'twixt agreeing parts, 
Which never can be set at onement more, 
Until the maw's wide mouth be stopp'd with store. 



THE CONCLUSION. 

THUS have I writ, in smoother cedar tree 
So gentle Satires, penn'd so easily. 
Henceforth I write in crabbed oak tree rind, 
Search they that mean the secret meaning find. 
Hold out ye guilty and ye galled hides, 
A nd meet my far-fetch' d stripes with waiting 
sides. 



SATIRES. 



BOOK IV. 



The Author's Charge to his second Collection 
of Satires, called Biting Satires. 

Ye luckless rhymes, whom not unkindly spite 

Begot long since of truth and holy rage, 

Lie here in womb of silence and still night, 

Until the broils of next unquiet age : 

That which is others' grave shall be your womb, 
And that which bears you, your eternal tomb. 

Cease ere you 'gin, and ere ye live be dead ; 

And die and live ere ever ye be born ; 

And be not bore ere ye be buried, 

Then after live, sith you have died beforn. 
When I am dead and rotten in the dust 
Then 'gin to live, and leave when others lust 1 . 

For when I die shall envy die with me, 

And lie deep smother'd with my marble stone ; 

"Which while I live cannot be done to die, 

Nor, if your life 'gin ere my life be done, 

Will hardly yield t' await my mourning hearse, 
But for my dead corpse change my living verse. 

What shall the ashes of my senseless urn 

Need to regard the raving world above ? 

Sith afterwards I never can return, 

To feel the force of hatred or of love. 

Oh ! if my soul could see their posthume spite, 
Should it not joy and triumph in the sight? 

Whatever eye shalt find this hateful scroll 

After the date of my dear exequies, 

Ah, pity thou my plaining orphan's dole 

That fain would see the sun before it dies. 
It died before, uow let it live again, 
Then let it die, and bide some famous bane. 

Satis est potuisse videri. 

1 To lust, like to list, which is frequently used by Hall, signifies to 
will, to choose, to desire, to like. It has come down to us in this form 
in our valuable translation of the Psalms still used in the Liturgy : 
" Their eyes swell with fatness, and they do even what they lust." 
Ps. lxxiii. 7. 



BOOK IV 1 



SATIRE P. 

Che baiar, vuol, bai. 

Who dares upbraid these open rhymes of mine 
With blindfold Aquines, or dark Yenusine 3 ? 
Or rough-hewn Teretismes 4 , writ in th' antique vein 
Like an old satire, and new Flaccian? 

1 The fourth book breathes a stronger spirit of indigna- 
tion, and abounds with applications of Juvenal to modern 
manners, jet with the appearance of unborrowed and origi- 
nal satire. W. 

2 This first satire is miscellaneous and excursive, but the 
subjects often lead to an unbecoming licentiousness of lan- 
guage and images. In the lines beginning 

Who list excuse, when chaster dames can hire, &c. 
He has caught and finely heightened the force and manner of 
his master. It is in Juvenal's style to make illustrations 
satirical. They are very artfully and ingeniously introduced 
here. W. 

3 Aquines or Venusine; Juvenal or Horace. 

4 Teretismes, a word apparently coined by Hall, or rather 
adopted from the Greek TepeTKyfia, cantus lascivus et pro- 
cax. The allusion is to the licentiousness and obscurity of 
the old Fescennine verses or satires mentioned by Horace 
and Livy, with which the latter describes the ancient his- 
triones attacking each other : " Qui, non sicut ante fescennino 
versui similem, incompositum ac rudem alternis jaciebant." 
And which Horace describes as inconditi, rudes, incompti. 



72 hall's b. iv. 

Which who reads thrice, and rubs his rugged brow, 
And deep intendeth 5 every doubtful row, 
Scoring the margent with his blazing stars, 
And hundreth crooked interlinears, 
(Like to a merchant's debt-roll new defac'd, 
When some crack'd manor cross'd his book at last) 
Should all in rage the curse-beat page out-rive, 
And in each dust-heap bury me alive, 
Stamping like Bucephall, whose slackened reins 
And bloody fetlocks fry with seven men brains. 
More cruel than the craven satire's ghost, 
That bound dead bones unto a burning post; 
Or some more straight laced juror of the rest, 
Impanel'd of an Holyfax inquest: 
Yet well bethought, stoops down and reads anew ; 
(< The best lies low, and loathes the shallow view,' 
Quoth old Eudemon, when his gout-swoln fist 
Gropes for his double ducats in his chist:) 
Then buckle close his careless lids once more, 
To pose the purblind snake of Epidaure. 
That Lyncius may be match'd with Gau lard's sight, 
That sees not Paris for the houses' height 6 ; 
Or- wily Cyppus, that can wink and snort 
While his wife dallies on Maecenas' skort : 

5 To intend here signifies to regard with earnest attention; 
to be deeply intent upon. 

6 This alludes to a story told in the Contes du Sieur Gau- 
lard by the facetious des Accords, or Tabourot, " Quand il 
fut a Paris : passant par les rues : il disoit : Chascun me 
disoit que je verrois une si grande et belle ville, mais on se 
mocquoit bien de moi : car on ne la peut voir, a cause de la 
multitude des maisons qui empeschent la veueV 



S. I. SATIRES. 73 

Yet when he hath my crabbed pamphlet read 
As oftentimes as Philip 7 hath been dead, 
Bids all the furies haunt each peevish line 
That thus have rack'd their friendly reader's eyne ; 
Worse than the Logogryphs of later times, 
Or hundreth riddles shak'd to sleeveless rhymes. 
Should I endure these curses and despight 
While no man's ear should glow at what I write ? 
Labeo is whipp'd, and laughs me in the face : 
Why ? for I smite and hide the galled place. 
Gird but the cynic's helmet on his head, 
Cares he for Talus 8 , or his flail of lead? 
Long as the crafty cuttle lieth sure 
In the black cloud of his thick vomiture, 
Who list complain of wronged faith or fame, 
When he may shift it to another's name? 
Calvus can scratch his elbow and can smile, 
That thriftless Pontice bites his lip the while. 
Yet I intended in that self 9 device 
To check the churl for his known covetise. 

7 Frequent false reports of the death of Philip, King of 
Spain, were raised to amuse the news-seeking people. 

8 The allusion is to Spenser's Talus: 
His name was Talus, made of yron mould, 
Immoveable, resistlesse without ende ; 
Who in his hand an jron flaile did hould, 

With which he thresht out falshood, and did truth unfould.'* 

F. Q. b. v. c. 1. s. 12. 
He adds, that the guilty person, when marked, destroys all 
distinction, like the cuttle-fish concealed in the black fluid 
which he throws around him when in danger. 

9 Selff i. e. same. 

E 



74 - hall's b. iv. 

Each points his straight forefinger to his friend, 
Like the blind dial on the belfry end. 
Who turns it homeward, to say this is I, 
As bold Socrates in the comedy ? 
But single out, and say once plat and plain 
That coy Matrona is a courtesan ; 
Or thou, false Cryspus, chok'dst thy wealthy guest 
Whiles he lay snoring at his midnight rest, 
And in thy dung cart didst the carcass shrine 
And deep entomb it in Port-esquiline. 
Proud Trebius lives, for all his princely gait, 
On thirdhand suits, and scrapings of the plate. 
Titius knew not where to shroud 10 his head 
Until he did a dying widow wed, 
Whiles she lay doting on her deathes' bed, 
And now hath purchas'd lands with one night's pain , 
And on the morrow woos and weds again. 
Now see I fire-flakes sparkle from his eyes, 
Like to a comet's tail in the angry skies ; 
His pouting cheeks puff up above his brow, 
Like a swoln toad touch'd with the spider's blow ; 
His mouth shrinks sideward like a scornful 

plaice 11 . 
To take his tired ear's ingrateful place. 

10 To shroud, i. e. to hide. 

11 That is, he makes a wry mouth at it. So in Dekker's 
Honest Whore, part ii: " I should have made a wry mouth 
at the world like zplayse" And Nashe in his Lenten Stuffe, 
1599. ' " Save only the playse and the butt, that made wry 
mouths at him, and for their mocking have wry mouths ever 
since." 



S. I. SATIRES. 75 

His ears hang laving 12 like a new lugg'd swine, 
To take some counsel of his grieved eyne. 
Now laugh I loud, and break my spleen to see 
This pleasing pastime of my poesy ; 
Much better than a Paris-garden bear 13 , 
Or prating puppet on a theatre ; 
Or Mimo's whistling to his tabouret 14 , 
Selling: a laughter for a cold meal's meat. 

12 Laving, i.e. flapping down. We have lave-eared before 
at p. 33. 

13 Paris Garden was a famous bear garden on the Bank- 
side, in Southwark, contiguous to the Globe Theatre. It was 
so called from Robert de Paris, who had a house and garden 
tbere in the reign of Richard IT. Sir John Davies, in one of 
his Epigrams, The Meditations of a Gull, says, 

" Or of a journey he deliberates 

To Paris garden, cocke pit, or the play." 

And in another, in Publium, No. 43 : 

Publius, student at the common law, 
Oft leaves his bookes, and for his recreation, 
To Paris Garden doth himselfe withdraw, 
Where he is ravisht with such delectation, 
As downe amongst the bears and dogs he goes, 
Where, whilst he skipping cries, to head, to head. 
His satten doublet and his velvet hose, 
Are all with spittle from above be-spread. 
When he is like his father's country hall, 
Stinking with dogges, and muted all with hawkes. 
And rightly too on him this filth doth fall 
Which for such filthy sports his bookes forsakes, 
Leaving old Ploydon, Dier, and Brooke alone, 
To see old Harry Hunks and Sacarson *. 

14 Mr. Warton thought Kempe, the player, was here ridi- 
culed ; but a tabor, or tabouret and pipe was the usual appen- 
dage of the clown on the ancient stage. Tarleton is repre- 

* Names of two celebrated bears. 
E 2 



76 hall's b. iv. 

Go to then, ye my sacred Semones 15 , 

And please me more the more ye do displease. 

Care we for all those bugs of idle fear ? 

For TigePs grinning on the theatre ? 

Or scar-babe threatenings of the rascal crew ; 

Or wind-spent verdicts of each ale-knights' view ? 

Whatever breast doth freeze for such false dread, 

Beshrew his base white liver for his meed. 

Fond were that pity, and that fear were sin, 

To spare waste leaves that so deserved bin. 

Those toothless toys that dropp'd out by mishap, 

Be but as lightning to a thunder-clap. 

Shall then that foul infamous Cyned's hide 

Laugh at the purple wales of others' side ? 

Not if he were as near as, by report, 

The stews had wont be to the tennis court : 

He that, while thousands envy at his bed, 

Neighs after bridals, and fresh maidenhead ; 

While slavish Juno dares not look awry, 

To frown at such imperious rivalry ; 

Not though she sees her wedding jewels dress'd 

To make new bracelets for a strumpet's wrest; 

Or like some strange disguised Messaline, 

Hires a night's lodging of his concubine ; 

sented with one in a print on the titlepage of his Jests, printed 
in 1611 : and there is a much more ancient representation of 
a fool with a tabor in Mr. Douce's Illustrations of Shak- 
speare. '* 

15 He uses semones for satires. The semones were the in- 
ferior deities, among which were the Satyrs. 



S. I. SATIRES. 77 

Whether his twilight-torch of love do call 
To revels of uncleanly musical, 
Or midnight plays, or taverns of new wine, 
Hie ye white aprons to your landlord's sign, 
When all, save toothless age or infancy, 
Are summoned to the court of venery. 
Who list excuse ? when chaster dames can hire 
Some snout-fair 16 stripling to their apple-squire, 
Whom staked up like to some stallion steed, 
They keep with eggs and oysters for the breed. 
O Lucine ! barren Caia hath an heir, 
After her husband's dozen years despair. 
And now the bribed midwife swears apace, 
The bastard babe doth bear his father's face. 
But hath not Lelia pass'd her virgin years ? 
For modest shame (God wot !) or penal fears ? 
He tells a merchant tidings of a prize, 
That tells Cynedo of such novelties, 
Worth little less than landing of a whale, 
Or Gades' spoils 17 , or a churl's funerale. 
Go bid the banns and point the bridal day, 
His broking bawd hath got a noble prey ; 
A vacant tenement, an honest dower 
Can fit his pander for her paramour, 

16 Marston has this epithet : Scourge of Yillanie, b. i. 3. 
" Had I some snout-fair brats, they should endure 
The newly found Castiiion calenture 
Before some pedant," &c. 
For apple-squire see page 8. 

11 Cadiz had then recently been taken. 



78 HALI/S B. IV. 

That he, base wretch, may clog his wittol'd head, 
And give him hansel of his Hymen bed. 
Ho ! all ye females that would live unshent, 
Fly from the reach of Cyned's regiment. 
If Trent be drawn to dregs and Low refuse, 
Hence, ye hot lecher, to the steaming stews. 
Tyber, the famous sink of Christendom, 
Turn thou to Thames, and Thames run towards 

Home. 
Whatever damned stream but thine were meet 
To quench his lusting liver's boiling heat? 
Thy double draught may quench his dogdays' rage 
With some stale Bacchis, or obsequious page, 
When writhen Lena makes her sale-set shows 
Of wooden Venus with fair-limned brows ; 
Or like him more some veiled matron's face, 
Or trained prentice trading in the place. 
The close adultress, where her name is red, 
Comes crawling from her husband's lukewarm bed, 
Her carrion skin bedaub'd with odours sweet, 
Groping the postern with her bared feet. 
Now play the satyr whoso list for me, 
Valentine self, or some as chaste as he. 
In vain she wisheth long Alcmena's night, 
Cursing the hasty dawning of the light ; 
And with her cruel Lady-star uprose 
She seeks her third roost on her silent toes, 
Besmeared all with loathsome smoke of lust, 
Like Acheron's steams, or smouldring sulphur dust. 



S. T. SATIRES. 70 

Yet all day sits she simpering m lier mew 18 
Like some chaste dame, or shrined saint in show ; 
Whiles he lies wallowing with a westy 19 head 
And palish carcass, on his brothel bed, 
Till his salt bowels boil with poisonous fire : 
Right Hercules with his second Dejanire. 
Esculape ! how rife is physic made, 
When each brass bason 20 can profess the trade 
Of ridding pocky wretches from their pain, 
And do the beastly cure for ten groats gain? 
All these and more deserve some blood-drawn 

lines, 
But my six cords been of too loose a twine : 
Stay till my beard shall sweep mine aged breast, 
Then shall I seem an awful satirist : 
While now my rhymes relish of the ferule still, 
Some nose-wise pedant saith; whose deep-seen 

skill 
Hath three times construed either Flaccus o'er, 
And thrice rehears'd them in his trivial floor. 
So let them tax me for my hot blood's rage, 
Rather than say I doted in my age. 

18 Mew, a place where falcons were kept; but here used 
metaphorically for a close retreat. 

19 A westy head, is a dizzy, confused head. Coles renders 
westy, by Scotomaticus, vertigine laborans, i. e. troubled with 
scotoma, or dizziness. 

20 i. e. barber, designated by one of his chief implements. 



80 hall's b. iv. 

SATIRE II «. 

Arcades ambo. 

Old driveling Lolio drudges all he can 
To make his eldest son a gentleman. 
Who can despair to see another thrive, 
By loan of twelvepence to an oyster-wive ? 
When a craz'd scaffold, and a rotten stage, 
Was all rich Nsenius his heritage. 
Nought spendeth he for fear, nor spares for cost ; 
And all he spends and spares beside is lost. 
Himself goes patch'd like some bare cottyer, 
Lest he might aught the future stock appeyre 22 . 
Let giddy Cosmius change his choice array, 
Like as the Turk his tents, thrice in a day. 
And all to sun and air his suits untold 
From spiteful moths, and frets, and hoary mould, 
Bearing his pawn-laid lands upon his back 
As snails their shells, or pedlers do their pack. 
Who cannot shine in tissues and pure gold 
That hath his lands and patrimony sold ? 
Lolio's side coat is rough pampilian 
Gilded with drops that down the bosom ran, 

21 This satire contains the character of an old country 
squire, who starves himself to breed his son a lawyer and a 
^entleman. It appears that the vanity or luxury of purchas- 
j ng dainties at an exorbitant price began early. W. 

22 Appayre, savs Baret, to diminish: to make worse. At- 
tenuo: minuo. Amoindrir; amenuisir. . 



S. II. SATIRES. 81 

White carsey 23 hose patched on either knee, 
The very emblem of good husbandry, 
And a knit nightcap made of coarsest twine, 
With two long labels button'd to his chin ; 
So rides he mounted on the market day, 
Upon a straw-stufFd pannel 24 all the way 
With amaund 25 charg'd with household merchan- 
dise, 
With eggs, or white meat, from both dairies : 
And with that buys he roast for Sunday noon, 
Proud how he made that week's provision. 
Else is he stall-fed on the worky-day, 
With brown bread crusts soften'd in sodden whey, 
Or water gruel, or those paups of meal 
That Maro makes his simule, and cybeale 26 : 
Or once a week, perhaps for novelty, 
Reez'd bacon soords 27 shall feast his family ; 

23 i. e. kersey, a sort of coarse woollen staff then much 
in use. 

24 A pannel is a pack-saddle, or sumpter-saddle. Dossualia, 
Sagma, Clitella. 

25 A maund is a basket ; ODan'o, Saxon. Hence Maundy 
Thursday, the day preceding Good Friday, on which it is 
castomary for the King to distribute alms to a certain num- 
ber of poor people at Whitehall. It was so named from the 
maunds in which the gifts were contained. 

26 Similago, Lat. semoule, Fr. semola, Ital. is that kind of 
eoarse meal of which porridge was usually made. Cibale, Lat. 
cibaglia, Ital. is food or victuals in general. Hall probably 
means to sav that Maro made those paups or miserable por- 
tions of coarse meal both his meat and drink. 

27 Reez'd is rusty, and soords a corruption of swards, skins, 
or rinds, 

E 3 



82 hall's B. IV. 

And weens this more than one egg cleft in twain 
To feast some patron and his chappelain : 
Or more than is some hungry gallant's dole 28 , 
That in a dearth rims sneaking to a hole, 
And leaves his man and dog to keep his hall, 
Lest the wild room should run forth of the wall. 
Good man ! him list not spend his idle meals 
In quinsing plovers, or in winging quails 29 ; 
Nor toot 30 in cheap -side baskets earne and late 
To set the first tooth in some novel cate. 
Let sweet-mouth'd Mercia bid what crowns she 

please, 
For half-red cherries, or green garden peas, 
Or the first artichokes of all the year, 
To make so lavish cost for little cheer : 
When Loho feasteth in his revelling fit, 
Some starved pullen scours the rusted spit. 



28 Dole, i e. portion. 

29 These are teriues in the noble art of Kerving. In that 
carious list of ' the dewe termys to speak of brekynge or dres- 
synge of dy vers beestys andfoules,' printed in the Boke of St. 
Albans. (I quote from the fac simile of the edition of 1496 ) 
the proper terms appear to be, a quayle wynggyd, a plover 
mynsyd. 

30 To toot is to pry, to search, to peep. So Spenser, in the 
Shepherd's Kalendar, March, 66 : 

" With bow and bolts in either hand, 
For birdes in bushes tooting ■" 

And in Cranmer's Defense of the Sacrament, 1550, fol. 101. 
a. " Peeping, tooting, and gazing at that which the priest 
held up in his hand." Circumspectans, looking hither and 
thither, tooting to and fro. Huttons Dictionary, 



S. II. SATIRES. 83 

For else how should his son maintained be 
At inns of court or of the chancery : 
There to learn law, and courtly carriage, 
To make amends for his mean parentage ; 
Where he unknown and ruffling as he can, 
Goes current eachwhere for a gentleman? 
While yet he roosted at some uncouth sign, 
Nor ever read his tenure's second line. 
What broker's lousy wardrobe cannot reach 
With tissued panes 31 to pranck each peasant 

breech ? 
Couldst thou but give the wall, the cap, the knee, 
To proud Sartorio that goes straddling by. 
Wert not the needle pricked on his sleeve, 
Doth by good hap the secret watchword give ? 
But hear'stthou, — Lolio's son ? — 'gin not thy gait 
Until the evening owl or bloody bat : 
Never until the lamps of Paul's been light 32 , 
And niggard lanterns shade the moonshine night ; 

31 Panes were openings in the cloth where other colours 
were inserted in silk or rich stuff, and drawn through ; in 
fact, the pane of a window is perfectly analogous, and of the 
same origin. Panniculus. " The Switzers weare no coates, 
but doublets and hose of panes intermingled with red and 
yellow, and some with blew, trimmed with long puffes of 
yellow and blew sarcenet rising up between the panes." 
Coriafs Crudities, 1611 (repr. vol. i. p. 41). These slashed 
garments were, of course, expensive, and therefore unsuited 
to the lower classes. 

32 The lamps about St. Paul's were at that time the only 
regular night illuminations of London. But in an old col- 
lection of Jests, some Bucks coming drunk from a tavern, 
and reeling through the city, amused themselves in pulling 



84 hall's b. iv. 

Then when the guilty bankrupt, in bold dread, 
From his close cabin thrusts his shrinking head, 
That hath been long in shady shelter pent 
Imprisoned for fear of prisonment. 
May be some russet-coat parochian 
Shall call thee cousin, friend, or countryman, 
And for thy hoped fist crossing the street 
Shall in his father's name his godson greet. 
Could never man work thee a worser shame 
Than once to minge 33 thy father's odious name? 
Whose mention were alike to thee as lieve 34 
As a catch-poll's fist unto a bankrupt's sleeve; 
Or an hos ego from old Petrarch's spright 
Unto a plagiary sonnet-wright. 
There, soon as he can kiss his hand in gree, 
And with good grace bow it below the knee, 
Or make a Spanish face 35 with fawning cheer, 
With th' Hand congee like a cavalier, 

down the lanterns which hung before the doors of the houses. 
A grave citizen unexpectedly came out and seized one of 
them, who said, in defence, " I am only snuffing your can- 
dle." Jests to make you merie, 1607, 4to. page 6, Jest 
17. W. 

33 To minge, to mention, to mind or remember one of a 
thing: myn^ian, Saxon. The word was in use in Northamp- 
tonshire in the times of Ray and Lye. Hall uses it again 
in his Elegy on Dr. Whitaker— 

Ay ming'd, ay mourn'd, and wished oft in wast. 

34 .4s lieve, that is, as agreeable, as pleasing. 

35 A Spanish-face meant a courtierlike one, no doubt. The 
Spaniards courtesy was then held in universal estimation. 
The Island congee I cannot explain. This Spanish face, is 



S. II, SATIRES. 85 

And shake his head, and cringe his neck and side, 
Home hies he in his father's farm to bide. 
The tenants wonder at their landlord's son, 
And bless them at so sudden coming on, 
More than who vies 36 his pence to view some 

trick 
Of strange Moroco's 37 dumb arithmetic, 
Or the young elephant, or two-tail'd steer, 
Or the rigg'd camel, or the fiddling frere. 
Nay then his Hodge shall leave the plough and 

wain, 
And buy a book, and go to school again. 



the Castaliano volto of Shakspeare, in Twelfth Night, Act i. 
Sc. 3; where the editions erroneously read, " Castiliano 
vulgo." 

36 To vie was to wager, stake or put down money : it is a 
term borrowed from the old game of Gleek. 

37 Morocco, or Marocco, was the name of Banke's wonder- 
ful horse, celebrated by all writers of the day. Sir Kenelm 
Digby, in his Treatise on Bodies, p. 393, says, "This borse 
would restore a glove to the due owner after the master had 
whispered the man's name in his ear; would tell the just 
number of pence in any piece of silver coin newly showed 
him by bis master: and even obey presently his command, 
&c. &c. He was celebrated also for his dancing, and among 
other exploits, he went up to the top of St. Paul's in 1601. 
The fate of man and horse is not known with certainty, but 
it has been asserted, that they were both burnt at Rome, as 
magicians, by order of the Pope, after having exhibited 
through Europe. The best account of Bankes and his 
horse, says Mr. Douce, is to be found in the notes to a 
French translation of Apuleius's Golden Ass, by Jean de 
Montlyard. 1602. They were the subjects of one or two cu- 
rious English pamphlets. 



86 hall's B. IV. 

Why mought not he as well as others done, 
Rise from his festue to his Littleton ? 
Fools they may feed with words and live by air, 
That climb to honour by the pulpit's stair : 
Sit seven years pining in an Anchore's chair, 
To win some patched shreds of miniver 38 ; 
And seven more plod it at a patron's tail 
To get a gelded 39 chapel's cheaper sale. 
Old Lolio sees, and laugheth in his sleeve 
At the great hope they and his state do give. 
But that which glads and makes him proud'st 

of all, 
Is when the brabling neighbours on him call 
For counsel in some crabbed case of law, 
Or some indentments, or some bond to draw : 
His neighbour's goose hath grazed on his lea, 
What action mought be enter'd in the plea ? 
So new fall'n lands have made him in request, 
That now he looks as lofty as the best. 
And well done, Lolio, like a thrifty sire, 
'Twere pity but thy son should prove a squire. 



38 Miniver (says Philips, World of Words), a kind of 
fur ; being, as some think, the skin of a squirrel's belly; or, 
as others say, of a little white beast (like to a weasel), breed- 
ing in Muscovy. Minsheu thus defines it: " Pellis est cu- 
jusdam albe bestiolas, quae utuntur Academici, Senatores et 
Juridici, ad duplicanda super humeralia togas et stolas pur- 
pureas."* Cotgrave makes it the fur of the small weasel. 
Menu vair. 

39 So in the Return from Parnassus, Act. iii. Sc. 1 : " He 
hath a proper gelded parsonage.'' 



S. II. SATIRES. 87 

How I foresee in many ages past, 
When Lolio's caitive 40 name is quite defaced, 
Thine heir, his heir's heir, and his heir again 
From out the loins of careful Lolian, 
Shall climb up to the chancel pews on high, 
And rule and reign in their rich tenancy ; 
When perch'd aloft to perfect their estate 
They rack their rents unto a treble rate 41 ; 
And hedge in all the neighbour common lands, 
And clog their slavish tenants with commands ; 
Whiles they, poor souls, with feeling sigh com- 
plain, 
And wish old Lolio were alive again, 
And praise his gentle soul and wish it well, 
And of his friendly facts full often tell. 
His father dead ! tush, no it was not he, 
He finds records of his great pedigree, 
And tells how first his famous ancestor 
Did come in long since with the conqueror. 
Nor hath some bribed herald first assign'd 
His quarter'd arms and crest of gentle kind ; 



40 Caitive, i. e. base, servile ; from chetif, Fr. 

41 He predicts with no small sagacity, that Lolio's son's 
distant posterity will rack their rents to a treble proportion 
"And hedge in all the neighbour common lands." Enclo- 
sures of waste lands were among the great and national 
grievances of our author's age. He dwells again upon this 
evil in the first and third satires of the fifth book. It may 
be presumed, that the practice was then carried on with the 
most arbitrary spirit of oppression and monopoly. W. 



88 hall's b. iv. 

That Scottish barnacle, if I might choose, 
That of a worm doth wax a winged goose 42 ; 
Natheless some hungry squire for hope of good 
Matches the churl's son into gentle blood, 
Whose son more justly of his gentry boasts 
Than who were born at two pied painted posts 43 , 



42 " There are, in the North parts of Scotland, certain 
trees, whereon do grow shell fishes, &c. &c. which falling 
into the water, do become fowls, whom we call barnakles ; 
in the North of England brant geese ; and in Lincolnshire 
tree geese." Gerard's Herbal, 1597, p. 1391. Again he 
says, " Many of these shells I brought with me to London, 
which after 1 had opened, I found in them living things 
without form or shape ; in others, which were nearer come 
to ripenesse, I found living things that were very naked, in 
shape like a bird : in others, the birds covered with a soft 
downe, the shell half open, and the birds ready to fall out, 
which, no doubt, were the fowles called barnakles." Dr. 
Bullein, in his Bulwarke of Defence, 1562, not only believes 
this himself, but bestows the epithets ignorant and incredu- 
lous on those who did not; and in the same breath main- 
tains that crystal is nothing but ice ! Gaspar Schott, in his 
Physica Curiosa, has collected from a multitude of authors 
whatever has been written concerning this Clakis, or tree 
goose. See also Drayton's Polyolbion, xxvii Song. There 
is much buniour in choosing such a transformed crest for the 
flew made gentleman. 

43 Posts painted and ornamented were usually set up at 
the doors of sheriffs, mayors, and other magistrates, on which 
the royal proclamations were fixed. These were usually 
new painted on entering into office. Shakspeare alludes to 
these posts in Twelfth Night, Act i. Sc. 5. " He says he'll 
stand at your door like a sheriff's post." Bishop Earle, in 
his Microcosmography , in the character of an Alderman, says, 
" His discourse is commonly the annals of his mayoralty, 
and what good government there was in the days of bis gold 
chain, thougb the door posts were the only things that suffered 
reformation." 



S. II. SATIRES. 89 

And had some traunting 44 merchant to his sire, 
That trafficked both by water and by fire. 
O times ! since ever Rome did kings create, 
Brass gentlemen, and Caesar's laureate. 

44 To traunt, is to traffio in an itinerary manner like a 
pedler. 



90 hall's b. iv. 

SATIRE III«. 

Fuimus troes. Vel vix ea nostra. 

What boots it, Pontice, though thou coulclst 

discourse 
Of a long golden line of ancestors ? 
Or show their painted faces gaily drest, 
From ever since before the last conquest? 
Or tedious bead-rolls of descended blood, 
From father Japhet since Deucalion's flood ? 
Or call some old church windows to record 

The age of thy fair arms ; 

Or find some figures half obliterate 

In rain-beat marble near to the church gate 

Upon a cross-legg'd tomb : what boots it thee 

To show the rusted buckle that did tie 

The garter of thy greatest grandsire's knee ? 

What to reserve their relics many years, 

Their silver spurs, or spils 46 of broken spears? 

45 He here touches on the pride of pedigree. The intro- 
duction is from Juvenal's eighth satire ; and the substitution 
of the memorials of English ancestry, such as were then 
fashionable, in the place of Juvenal's parade of family sta- 
tues without arms or ears, is remarkably happy. But the 
humour is half lost, unless by recollecting the Roman origi- 
nal, the reader perceives the unexpected parallel. Some 
well known classical passages are afterward happily mixed, 
modernised and accommodated to his general purpose. W 

46 Spils are splinters, or broken fragments. The word has 
been recently revived to express small slips of paper. 



S. III. SATIRES. 91 

Or cite old Ocland's verse 47 , how they did wield 
The wars inTurwin, or in Tuniey field 48 ? 
And if thou'canst in picking straws engage 
In one half day thy father's heritage ; 
Or hide whatever treasures he thee got, 
In some deep cock-pit, or in desp'rate lot 
Upon a six- square piece of ivory, 
Throw both thyself and thy posterity ? 
Or if (O shame !) in hired harlot's bed 
Thy wealthy heirdom thou have buried : 
Then Pontice little boots 49 thee to discourse 
Of a long golden line of ancestors. 
Yentrous Fortunio his farm hath sold, 
And gads to Guiane 50 land to fish for gold, 

47 Christopher Ocland, a schoolmaster of Cheltenham, pub- 
lished, in 1582, two poems in Latin Hexameters, one enti- 
tled Anglorum Prcelia, the other Elizabetha. To these 
poems, which are written in a low style of Latin versifica- 
tion, is prefixed an edict from the lords of privy council, re- 
quiring them to be publicly read and taught in all schools 
instead of some of the heathen poets, as it styles the ancient 
classics. It appears from an introductory sonnet by Thomas 
Watson, author of the Hecatompatbia, that Ocland was a 
very old man, hence he is called old Ocland by our author. 
See Wartons History of Poetry, vol. iii. p. 314. 

48 The battles of Terouanne and Tournay, in the reign of 
Henry VIII, are meant. 

49 Boot is profit, advantage. The meaning is, therefore, 
" it little profits thee to discourse," &c. 

50 There was then a spirit of adventure afloat, and many 
fruitless expeditions in search of gold mines were under- 
taken : the reader will recollect those of Sir Walter Raleigh 
to Guiana and Orinoco, in which he was attended by many 
young men of spirit and slender fortune misled by golden 
dreams. 



92 hall's b. iv. 

Meeting, perhaps, if Orenoque deny, 
Some straggling pinnace 51 of Polonian rye : 
Then comes home floating with a silken sail, 
That Severn shaketh with his cannon peal ; 
Wiser Raymundus, in his closet pent, 
Laughs at such danger and adventurement, 
When half his lands are spent in golden smoke, 
And now his second hopeful glass is broke. 
But yet if hap'ly his third furnace hold, 
Devoteth all his pots and pans to gold 52 : 
So spend thou, Pontice, if thou canst not spare, 
Like some stout seaman or philosopher. 
And were thy fathers gentle ? that's their praise ; 
No thank to thee by whom their name decays ; 
By virtue got they it, and valorous deed ; 
Do thou so, Pontice, and be honoured. 
But else, look how their virtue was their own, 
Not capable of propagation. 
Right so their titles been, nor can be thine, 
Whose ill deserts might blank their golden line. 
Tell me, thou gentle Trojan, dost thou prize 
Thy brute beasts worth by their dam's qualities ? 
Saystthou this colt shall prove aswift-pac'd steed 
Only because a Jennet 53 did him breed ? 

51 A pinnace was a small light vessel : " q. pinnata (says 
Philips), i. e. winged; or from pinus, a pine tree j of which 
it is commonly made." 

52 Alluding to the follies and dupery of Alchemical pur- 
suits, then very prevalent, and so admirably ridiculed by 
Ben Jonson in his Alchemist. 

53 A Jennet, according to Philips, was a Barbary horse ; but 



S. III. SATIRES. 93 

Or sayst thou this same horse shall win the prize, 
Because his dam was swiftest Trunchefice, 
Or Huncevall his sire ? himself a Galloway 54 ? 
Whiles like a tireling jade he lags half-way. 
Or whiles thou seest some of thy stallion race, 
Their eyes bor'dout, masking the miller's maze 55 , 
Like to a Scythian slave sworn to the pail, 
Or dragging frothy barrels at his tail ? 
Albe wise nature in her providence, 
Wont in the want of reason and of sense, 
Traduce the native virtue with the kind, 
Making all brute and senseless things inclin'd 
Unto their cause, or place where they were sown; 
That one is like to all, and all like one. 
Was never fox but wily cubs begets ; 
The bear his fierceness to his brood besets : 
Nor fearful hare falls out of lion's seed, 
Nor eagle wont the tender dove to breed. 
Crete ever wont the cypress sad to bear, 
Acheron banks the palish popelar : 
The palm doth rifely rise is Jury field 56 , 
And Alpheus' waters nought but olives wild. 



Spanish horses, which were most probably the same breed 
of small, well proportioned animals, were also called Jennets, 

54 i. e. a common hackney. Thus Pistol, in K. Henry IV. 
p. 1, uses it. as a contemptuous phrase — " Know we not gal- 
loway nags?" 

55 That is, treading the round in a mill; for which purpose 
a blind horse is preferred. 



. e. Judea : rifely is commonly. 



94 hall's b. iv. 

Asopus breeds big bulrushes alone, 
Meander, heath; peaches by Nilus grown. 
An English wolf, an Irish toad to see, 
Were as a chaste man nurs'd in Italy. 
And now when nature gives another guide 
To humankind that in his bosom bides, 
Above instinct his reason and discourse, 
His being better, is his life the worse? 
Ah me ! how seldom see we sons succeed 
Their father's praise, in prowess and great deed ? 
Yet certes if the sire be ill inclin'd, 
His faults befall his sons by course of kind. 
Scaurus was covetous, his son not so; 
But not his pared nail will he forego. 
Florian the sire did women love a-life, 
And so his son doth too, all but his wife. 
Brag of thy father's faults, they are thine own : 
Brag of his lands if those be not foregone. 
Brag of thine own good deeds, for they are thine, 
More than his life, or lands, or golden line. 



SATIRES. 95 

SATIRE IV 5 ?. 

Plus beau que fort. 

Can I not touch some upstart carpet-shield 

Of Lolio's son, that never saw the field 58 ; 

Or tax wild Pontice for his luxuries 

But straight they tell me of Tiresias' eyes ? 

Or luckless Collingborn's feeding of the crows 59 , 

Or hundredth scalps which Thames still overflows, 

But straight Sigalion nods and knits his brows, 

57 In this satire the diversions of a delicate youth of fashion 
and refined manners are mentioned, as opposed to the rougher 
employments of a military life. Some of the most nervous 
and spirited of Hall's verses are those in which he ridicules 
the foolish passion which then prevailed of making it a part 
of the education of our youth to bear arms in the wars of the 
Netherlands. W. 

58 Carpet-knights was a prevalent term of reproach for 
knights dubbed in peace on a carpet by mere court favour, 
not in the field for military prowess. Shakspeare has de- 
scribed one — " a knight dubb'd with unhack'd rapier, and 
on carpet considerations." Twelfth Night, Act iii. Sc. 4. 

A knight, and valiant servitor of late 
Plain'd to a lord and counsellor of state, 
That captains, in these days, were not regarded, 
And only carpet knights were well rewarded. 

Harington's Epigrams, IV. 65. 

59 Collingborne is the same whose legend is in the Mir- 
rour for Magistrates, and who was hanged for a distich he 
made on Catesby, Ratcliff, Lovel, and King Richard, about 
the year 1484. W. 

The distich, which is given by Grafton and the other chro- 
niclers, was as follows : 



96 hall's B. IV. 

And winks and wafts 6o his warning hand for fear, 

And lisps some silent letters in my ear ? 

Have I not vow'd for shunning such debate ? — 

Pardon ye satires, — to degenerate ! 

And wading low in the plebeian lake, 

That no salt wave shall froth upon my back. 

Let Labeo, or who else list for me, 

Go loose his ears and fall to alchemy : 

Only let Gallio give me leave a while 

To school him once or ere I change my style. 

O lawless paunch ! the cause of much despite, 

Through ranging of a currish appetite, 

When spleenish morsels cram the gaping maw, 

Withouten diet's care or trencher-law ; 

Tho' never have I Salerne rhymes profess'd 61 

To be some lady's trencher-critic guest; 

Whiles each bit cooleth for the oracle, 

Whose sentence charms it with a rhyming spell. 

The ratte, the cat, and Lovell our dogge, 
Rule all England under the hogge. 

Meaning, by the hog, King Richard, whose cognisance was a 
wild boar. 

60 Wafts, i. e. waves, or beckons with his hand. Shak- 
speare uses the word in this sense in Timon of Athens — 

Whom Fortune, with her ivory hand, wafts to her. 

61 The allusion is to the ScholaSalernitana, an old medical 
system in rhyming Latin verse, which chiefly describes the 
qualities of diet. W. 

It had been translated into English under the title of the 
School of Salerne, not long before. " There is much humour 
in trencher-critic," says Warton. Shakspeare has trencher- 
knight for a sycophant, in Love's Labour Lost, Act v. Sc. 2. 



S. IV. SATIRES. 97 

Touch not this choler, that melancholy, 
This bit were dry and hot, that cold and dry. 
Yet can I set my Gallio's dieting, 
A pestle 62 of a lark, or plover's wing; 
And warn him not to cast his wanton eyne 
On grosser bacon, or salt haberdine 63 , 
Or dried flitches of some smoked beeve, 
Hang'd on a writhen wythe 64 since Martin's 

eve 65 , 
Or burnt lark's heels, or rashers raw and green, 
Or melancholic liver of a hen, 

62 A PESTLE of pork was a leg of pork, or gammon of bacon, 
among our ancestors, and has the same meanin'g still in the 
Exraoor dialect. Mr. Nares says, that pestle was the term 
for the leg and leg-bone of any animal, and that it was probably 
so called from the similarity between a leg bone and the pes- 
tle used in a mortar. The humour of the present passage is 
increased by naming the leg of a lark, a thing ridiculously 
small, by the name applied to a ham or gammon. In May 
Day, by Chapman, however, the truncheons or short staves 
of Serjeants or constables are called pestles. 

63 Haberdine is salt-cod, most probably from its Dutch 
name, Abberdcsn, whence also the French have it Habordean. 

64 A writhen wythe is a band made of withy ; or twisted 
willow twigs. 

65 The feast of St. Martin, or Martlemas, the 11th of No- 
vember, was the customary time for hanging up provisions to 
drv, which bad been salted for winter provision : as our an- 
cestors lived chiefly upon salted meat in the spring, the win- 
ter-fed cattle not being thought fit for use ; hence it was 
called Martlemas-beef ; in French, Boeuf bresille, from its 
being red like brasilwood. The good old Tusser says : 

" For Easter at Martilmas hang up a beef, 
With that and the like ere grasse beefe come in 
Thy folke shall look cherely, when others look thin." 

F 



98 hall's b. iv. 

Which stout Vorano brags to make his feast, 
And claps his hand on his brave ostridge breast ; 
Then falls to praise the hardy Janizar 
That sucks his horse side, thirsting in the war. 
Lastly, to seal up all that he hath spoke, 
Quaffs a whole tunnel of tobacco smoke. 
If Martius in boist'rous buffs be dress'd, 
Branded with iron plates upon the breast, 
And pointed on the shoulders for the nonce 66 , 
As new come from the Belgian garrisons, 
What should thou need to envy ought at that, 
Whenas thou smellest like a civet cat ? 
Whenas thine oiled locks smooth platted fall, 
Shining like varnished pictures on a wall. 
When a plum'd fan 67 may shade thy chalked face, 
And lawny strips thy naked bosom grace. 
If brabbling Make-fray, at each fair and size, 
Picks quarrels for to show his valiantize, 
Straight pressed for an hungry Switzer's pay 
To thrust his fist to each part of the fray, 

66 That is, ornamented with tags or shoulderknots for the 
purpose. 

67 Fans of feathers were then chiefly used. So Harring- 
ton, Epig, 70,1. 1 : 

When Galla and rayselfe do talk together 

Her face she shrowds with fan of tawny feather. 

And while my thoughts somewhat thereof deviseth, 

A double doubt within my mind ariseth : 

As first, her skin or fan which looketh brighter, 

And second, whether those her looks be lighter, 

Than that same plume wherewith her looks were hidden, 

But if I cleer'd the doubts I should be chidden. 



S. IV. SATIRES. 99 

And piping hot, puffs toward the pointed plain 

With a broad Scot, or proking-spit of Spain 68 ; 

Or hoyseth sail up to a foreign shore, 

That he may live a lawless conqueror 69 . 

If some such desp'rate hackster shall devise 

To rouse thine hare's-heart from her cowardice, 

As 70 idle children striving to excell 

In blowing bubbles from an empty shell ; 

Oh Hercules ! how like to prove a man, 

That all so rath 71 thy warlike life began ? 

Thy mother could thee for thy cradle set 

Her husband's rusty iron corselet; 

Whose jargling 72 sound might rock her babe to 

rest, 
That never plain'd of his uneasy nest : 
There did he dream of dreary wars at hand, 
And woke and fought, and won, ere he could 

stand. 
But who hath seen the lambs of Tarentine, 
May guess what Gallio his manners been; 
All soft as is the falling thistle-down, 
Soft as the fumy ball, or Morrian's crown 73 . 

68 j± prolcing-spit seems to mean a long Spanish rapier, in 
contrast with a Scotch broad-sword. 

69 i. e. turn pirate. 70 As, for like, or, It will be as. 

71 Hath is precocious, early, soon. Milton has the word : 

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. 

72 Jargling. This word, I believe, is Hall's own creation : 
its sense as connected with jarring is obvious. 

73 Warton says, a fumy ball means a ball of perfume. I 
doubt this ; perhaps the sort of fungus called a puff-ball may 

F 2 



100 hall's B. IV. 

Now Gailio, gins thy youthful heat to reign 
In every vigorous limb and swelling vein ; 
Time bids thee raise thine headstrong thoughts 

on high, 
To valour and adventurous chivalry : 
Pawn thou no glove for challenge of the deed, 
ISTor make thy Quintain 74 others armed head 
T' enrich the waiting herald with thy shame, 
And make thy loss the scornful scaffold's game. 
Wars, God forfend ! nay, God defend from war ; 
Soon are sons spent, that not soon reared are. 
Gallio may pull me roses ere they fall, 
Or in his net entrap the tennis-ball, 
Or tend his spar-hawk mantling in her mew, 
Or yelping beagles busy heels pursue, 
Or watch a sinking cork upon the shore 75 , 
Or halter finches through a privy door 76 , 
Or list he spend the time in sportful game, 
In daily courting of his lovely dame, 

be intended. Morrian, Warton explains, the fool in a play ; 
but Morrian seems to be used here for a moor, or negro; 
morien, old French, whose soft woolly crown is alluded to ; 
this agrees better with the preceding similes of lamb's-wool, 
thistle-down, &c. Cotgrave interprets the French word, 
"- more, a moore ; morian, black-a-more." 

74 A quintain was a figure set up for tilters to run at in mock 
resemblance of a tournament. Sometimes it was only a post 
with a transverse movable piece, to which, at one end, was 
affixed a broad board for a mark, and at the other a bag of 
sand, which it required considerable dexterity to escape from 
if the tilter hit the mark full with his lance. 

75 vi. e. Angle for fish. 

76 A privy door is a pitfall, or trap-cage. 



S. IV. SATIRES. 101 

Hang on her lips, melt in her wanton eye, 

Dance in her hand, joy in her jollity : 

Here's little peril, and much lesser pain, 

So timely Hymen do the rest restrain. 

Hie, wanton Gallio, and wed betime, 

Why should'st thou leese the pleasures of thy 

prime ? 
Seest thou the rose-leaves fall ungathered ? 
Then hie thee, wanton Gallio, to wed. 
Let ring and ferule meet upon thine hand, 
And Lucine's girdle with her swathing-band. 
Hie thee, and give the world yet one dwarf more, 
Such as it got when thou thyself wast bore : 
Look not for warning of thy bloomed chin, 
Can ever happiness too soon begin ? 
Virginius vow'd to keep his maidenhead, 
And eats chaste lettuce, and drinks poppy-seed, 
And smells on camphor fasting ; and that done, 
Long hath he hVd, chaste as a vailed nun ; 
Free as a new absolved damosell 
That friar Cornelius shrived in his cell, 
Till now he wax'd a toothless bachelor, 
He thaws like Chaucer's frosty Janivere, 
And sets a month's- mind 77 upon smiling May, 
And dyes his beard that did his age bewray ; 



77 A month's mind, i. e. a longing. The origin of this 
phrase has been conjectured with much probability to have 
arisen from a woman's longing in the first month of preg- 
nancy. Shakspeare has the phrase in The Two Gentlemen 



102 hall's b. iv. 

Biting on annis-seed and rosemarine, 
Which might the fume of his rot lungs refine : 
Now he in Charon's barge a bride doth seek, 
The maidens mock, and call him withered leek, 
That with a green tail hath an hoary head 78 , 
And now he would, and now he cannot wed. 



of Verona, Act. i. So. 2 : " I see you have a month's mind to 
them." And Hudibras, p. 1. c. ii, iii. 

" For if a trumpet sound, or drum beat, 
Who bath not a month's mind to combat." 

78 This witty comparison is also to be found in Sir John 
Davies's Epigrams, printed with Marlowe's Translation of 
Ovid's Love Elegies at Middelbourg, 12rao. without date, 
Epig. 25. In Septimium : 

Septimius lives, and is like garlike seene, 

For though his head be white, his blade is greene. 



SATIRES. 103 

SATIRE V*9. 

Stupet albius aere. 

Would now that Matho were the satirist, 
That some fat bribe might grease him in the fist, 
For which he need not brawl at any bar, 
Nor kiss the book to be a perjurer; 
Who else would scorn his silence to have sold, 
And have his tongue tied with strings of gold ? 
Curius is dead, and buried long since, 
And all that loved golden abstinence. 
Might he not well repine at his old fee, 
Would he but spare to speak of usury ? 
Hirelings enow beside can be so base, 
Tho 80 we should scorn each bribing varlet's brass; 
Yet he and I could shun each jealous head, 
Sticking our thumbs close to our girdle-stead 81 . 

79 The fifth satire (says Warton) is the most obscure or' 
any. It exhibits the extremes of prodigality and avarice, 
and affords the first instance I remember to have seen of no- 
minal initials with dashes. Yet in Hall's Postscript to these 
Satires, he professes to have avoided all personal appli- 
cations. 

80 Tho for then: as before at p. 35, see note there. The 
modern editor here again takes it for a contraction of though. 
It occurs again three lines lower. 

81 The girdlestead, that is, the waist, the place of the gir- 
dle. So in Stubbe's Anatomy of Abuses : " Some short, 
scarsly reaching to the girdle-stead, or waste, some to the 
knee," &c. 



104 hall's B. IV. 

Tho were they manicled behind our back, 
Another's fist can serve our fees to take. 
Yet pursy Euclio cheerly smiling pray'd 
That my sharp words might curtail their side trade : 
For thousands been in every governall 82 
That live by loss, and rise by others' fall. 
Whatever sickly sheep so secret dies, 
But some foul raven hath bespoke his eyes? 

What else makes N when his lands are spent 

Go shaking like a threadbare male content, 
Whose bandless bonnet vails his o'ergrown chin, 
And sullen rags bewray his morphew'd skin 83 : 
So ships he to the wolfish western isle 
Among the savage kernes 84 in sad exile ; 
Or in the Turkish wars at Caesar's pay 
To rub his life out till the latest day. 
Another shifting gallant to forecast 
To gull his hostess for a month's repast, 

82 i. e. government, kingdom. 

83 Morphew is a leprous eruption appearing like a white 
scurf upon the body. Philips says, " from the French mort 
feu, dead fire, because it looks like the white sparks that fall 

from a brand extinguished." The epithet sullen, applied to 
rags here, means dismal. 

84 Kernes were light armed foot soldiers, either from Ire- 
land or the Western Isles, and are always represented as 
very poor, wild, and savage : " Kerne (says Stanihurst), 
Kighegreiiy signifieth a shower of hell ; because they are 
taken for no better than rakehells, or the devil's blacke garde " 
Description of Ireland, ch. S,fol. 28. 

Shakspeare in Macbeth says, the Rebel Macdonwald 

" from the Western Isles 

Of Kernes and Gallowglasses is supplied." 



S. V. SATIRES. 105 

With some gall'd trunk, ballac'd 85 with straw 

and stone, 
Left for the pawn of his provision ; 

Had F 's shop lien fallow but from hence ? 

His doors close seaFd as in some pestilence, 
Whiles his light heels their fearful flight can take, 
To get some badgeless blue upon his back 86 . 
Tocullio was a wealthy usurer, 
Such store of incomes had he every year, 
By bushels was he wont to mete his coin, 
As did the old wife of Trimalcion 87 . 
Could he do more that finds an idle room 
For many hundred thousands on a tomb ? 
Or who rears up four free schools in his age 
Of his old pillage, and damn'd surplusage? 
Yet now he swore by that sweet cross he kiss'd 
(That silver cross, where he had sacrific'd 
His coveting soul, by his desire's own doom, 
Daily to die the devil's martyrdom) 



85 The old substantive was " halase, wherewith ships are 
poysed to go upright." The participle of the verb to balase 
was therefore balased, as we find it in the old dictionaries. 
The old copies read bullae d, but the modern editor changed 
it unwarrantably to ballast. 

86 A blue coat and a badge being the dress of a servant, 
probably badge-less blue here means a soldiers coat. In 
Green's Tu Quoque, one savs, 

" A blue coat with a badge does better with you." 

87 Uxor (inquit) Trimalchionis, Fortunata appellatur, quce 
nummos modo metitur. 

Petronii Satyricon, cap. xxxvii. 

F 3 



106 hall's b. iv. 

His angels 88 were all flown up to their sky, 
And had forsook his naked treasury. 
Farewell Astrea and her weights of gold, 
Until his lingering calends once be told ; 
Nought left behind but wax and parchment scrolls, 
Like Lucian's dream that silver turned to coals. 
Shouldst thou him credit that nould credit thee ? 
Yes, and mayst swear he swore the verity. 
The ding-thrift 89 heir his shift-got sum misspent, 
Comes drooping like a penniless penitent, 
And beats his faint fist on Tucullio's door, 
It lost the last, and now must call for more. 
Now hath the spider caught a wand'ring fly, 
And drags her captive at her cruel thigh: 
Soon is his errand read in his pale face, 
Which bears dumb characters of every case. 
So Cyned's dusky cheek and fiery eye, 
And hairless brow, tells where he last did lie. 
So Matho doth bewray his guilty thought, 
Whiles his pale face doth say his cause is nought. 
Seest thou the wary angler trail along 
His feeble line, soon as some pike too strong 
Hath swallowed the bait that scorns the shore. 
Yet now near-hand cannot resist no more. 



88 Angels were gold coins worth about ten shillings. 

89 Bing-thrift y i. e. spendthrift, one who dings or throws 
away thrift, who spurns prudence and economy. 

No, but because the ding-thrift now is poore, 
And knows not where i'th' world to borrow more. 

Merrick. Hesper, p. 186. 



S. V. SATIRES. 107 

So lieth he aloof in smooth pretence, 

To hide his rough intended violence. 

As he that under name of Christmas cheer 

Can starve his tenants all the' ensuing year. 

Paper and wax (God wot !) a weak repay 

For such deep debts and down-stak'd sums as 

they : 
Write, seal, deliver, take, go spend and speed, 
And yet full hardly could his present need 
Part with such sum ; for but as yester-late 
Did Furnus offer pen-worths at easy rate, 
For small disbursment ; he the banks hath broke. 
And needs mote now some further plain o'erlook : 
Yet ere he go fain would he be reieas'd, 
Hie you, ye ravens, hie you to the feast. 
Provided that thy lands are left entire, 
To be redeem' d or ere thy day expire : 
Then shalt thou tear those idle paper bonds 
That thus had fettered thy pawned lands. 
Ah fool ! for sooner shalt thou sell the rest 
Than stake aught for thy former interest ; 
When it shall grind thy grating gall for shame, 
To see the lands that bear thy grandsire's name 
Become a dunghill peasant's summer-hall, 
Or lonely hermit's cage inhospitall 9 ° ; 
A pining gourmand, an imperious slave, 
A horse-leech, barren-womb, and gaping-grave : 
A legal thief, a bloodless murderer, 
A fiend incarnate, a false usurer : 

90 i. e. inhospitable. 



108 hall's b. iv. 

Albe such main extort scorns to be pent 

In the clay walls of thatched tenement ; 

For certes no man of a low degree 

May bid two guests, — or gout, or usury : 

Unless some base hedge-creeping Collybist 91 

Scatters his refuse scraps on whom he list 

For Easter-gloves, or for a shrovetide hen, 

Which bought to give, he takes to sell again. 

I do not mean some giozing merchant's feat, 

That laugheth at the cozened world's deceit, 

When as a hundred stocks lie in his fist, 

He leaks, and sinks, and breaketh when he list, 

But Nummius eas'd the needy gallant's care 

With a base bargain of his blowen 92 ware 

Of fusted hops, now lost for lack of sale, 

Or mould 93 brown paper 94 that could nought avail ; 

91 Collybist, K.oXkvj3i'Ti]g i a money changer, one who gains 
by usury, or change of money. 

92 Blowen for blown, i. e. stale, worthless. 

93 Mould for mouldy. 

94 Shakspeare alludes to these dishonest practices in 
Measure for Measure, where the clown enumerates the inha- 
bitants of the prison : " — First, here's young master Rash ; 
he's in for a commodity of brown paper and old ginger; nine 
score and seventeen pounds." Act iv. Sc. 3. The passages 
in contemporary writers, alluding to this custom of the 
usurers, are extremely numerous. It forms the subject of a 
chapter in Dekker's English Villanies ; and is well illus- 
trated by Mr. D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, first 
series, vol. iii. p. 78. These nominal purchases of any trum- 
pery which were to be turned into money by selling to a great 
loss, and often to a confederate of the usurer, have been 
heard of even in our times. Greene, in his Quip for an Up- 



S. V. SATIRES. 109 

Or what he cannot utter otherwise, 

May pleasure Fridoiine for treble price ; 

Whiles his false broker lieth in the wind, 

And for a present chapman is assign'd, 

The cut-throat wretch for their compacted gain 

Buys all but for one quarter of the main ; 

Whiles if he chance to break his dear-bought day 

And forfeit, for default of due repay, 

His late intangled lands ; then, Fridoiine, 

Buy thee a wallet, and go beg or pine. 

If Mammon's self should ever live with men, 

Mammon himself shall be a citizen. 

start Conrtier, says, " For the merchant he delivered iron, 
tin, lead, hops, sugars, spices, oyls, brown paper, or what- 
ever else, from six months to six months ; which when the 
poor gentleman came to sell again, he could not make three- 
score and ten in the hundred besides the usury." — And 
in his Defence of Cony Catching : " so that if he bor- 
row an hundred pounds, he shall have forty in silver, and 
threescore in wares ; as lute-strings, hobby horses, or brown 
paper, or cloath," &c. All rich citizens were engaged in 
this traffic. Hence in Cyinbeline, Belarius says : 

" Did you but know the City's usuries 
And felt them knowingly." 



110 hall's B. IV. 

SATIRE VI a 5 . 

Quid placet ergo ? 

I wot 96 not how the world's degenerate, 
That men or know, or like not their estate ; 
Out from the Gades up to th ? Eastern morn, 
Not one but holds his native state forlorn. 
When comely striplings wish it were their chance, 
For Caenis' distaff to exchange their lance, 
And wear curl'd periwigs, and chalk their face, 
And still are poring on their pocket-glass. 
Tir'd 97 with pinn'd ruffs, and fans, and partlet 98 

strips, 
And busks " ; and verdingales 10 ° about their hips ; 

95 In this satire, from Juvenal's position that every man is 
naturally discontented, and wishes to change his proper con- 
dition and character, he ingeniously takes occasion to expose 
some of the new fashions and affectations. W. 

96 To wot is to know. 97 i. e. Attired. 

98 A parilet was a neckerchief, gorget, or rail, say the old 
Dictionaries. But Minshew adds : Partlet, mentioned in the 
statute 24 H. VIII. c. 13, seemeth to be some part of a man's 
attire, viz. some loose collar of a doublet, to be set on or 
taken off by itselfe, without the bodies, as the picadillies now 
a daies, or as men's bands, or women's neckerchiefs, which 
are in some places, or at least have been within memorie, 
called partlets." 

99 Busks were pieces of wood or whalebone worn down 
the front of women's stays to keep them straight. It seems 
that such beings as are now popularly called dandies were not 
unknown in the good old times : the same accusation of 
wearing stays, and other articles of female attire, has been 
brought against their descendants. 

100 A verdingale, or farthingale, a kind of hoop. 



S. VI. SATIRES. Ill 

And tread on corked stilts 101 , a prisoner's pace, 
And make their napkin 102 for their spitting place, 
And gripe their waist within a narrow span : 
Fond Cxnis that wouldst wish to be a man ! 
Whose mannish housewives like their refuse state, 
And make a drudge* of their uxorious mate, 
Who like a cot-quean 103 freezeth at the rock 104 , 
Whiles his breech' d dame doth man the foreign 

stock. 
Xs't not a shame to see each homely groom 
Sit perch'd in an idle chariot room 105 , 

101 This kind of high shoe was called a moyle. u Mulleus, 
a shoe with a high sole, which kings and noblemen use to 
weare, nowe common amonge nice fellowes." Junius's No- 
menclator, by Fleming, 1585. 

102 Napkin, i. e. handkerchief. Baret, in his Alvenrie, has 
Napkin, or handkerchief, wherewith we wipe awaj the sweat, 
Sudarium ; distinguished from a table napkin, Mantile. 

103 A cot-quean is an effeminate fellow, one who busies 
himself about female affairs ; probably a corruption of co- 
quine, which Cotgrave interprets a cockney, a simper de cockit, 
nice thing. Addison compares a woman interfering with 
state affairs to a man interfering in female business, a cot- 
quean. 

104 The rock is the distaff, that is the staff on which the 
flax was held when spinning was performed without a wheel; 
or the corresponding part of the spinning wheel. 

105 << j n t jj e y ear if,64 Guylliam Boonen, a dutchman, be- 
came the queerie's coachmanne, and was the first that brought 
the use of coaches into England. And after a while, divers 
great ladies, with as great jealousie cf the queene's displea- 
sure made them coaches, and rid in them up and downe the 
countries to the great admiration of all beholders, but then 
by little and little they grew usual among the nobility and 
others of sort, and within twenty years began a great trade 
of coach making. And about that time began long wagons to 
come into use, such as now come to London from Gaunter- 



112 hall's B. IV. 

That were not meet some pannel to bestride, 
Sursingled lo6 to a galled hackney's hide ? 
Each muckworm will be rich with lawless gain, 
Altho' he smother up mowes of seven years grain, 
A ndhang'd himself when corn grows cheap again ; 
Altho' he buy whole harvests in the spring, 
And foyst in false strikes to the measuring : 
Altho' his shop be muiEed from the light 
Like a day dungeon, or Cimmerian night : 
Nor full nor fasting can the carle take rest, 
Whiles his George-Nobles rusten in his chest, 
He sleeps but once, and dreams of burglary, 
And wakes and casts about his frighted ete, 
And gropes for thieves on ev'ry darker shade ; 
And if a mouse but stir he calls for aid. 
The sturdy ploughman doth the soldier see 
All scarfed with pied colours to the knee, 
Whom Indian pillage hath made fortunate, 
And now he 'gins to loath his former state : 
Now doth he inly scorn his Kendall-Green 107 , 
And his patch'd cockers 108 now despised been. 

bury, Norwich, Ipswich, Gloucester, &c. with passengers 
and commodities. Lastly, even at this time, 1605, began 
the ordinary use of caroches." 

Stowes Annates, 1615, fol. p. 867, 2. 

106 A sursingle was a long upper girth which often went 
over the pannel, or saddle. 

107 A sort of forester's green cloth for which Kendal, in 
Westmoreland, was famous. It is celebrated as the livery 
of Robin Hood and his men : and is still the favourite colour 
of woodsmen and gamekeepers. 

108 Cokers were hedgers' or ploughmen's boots, made of 
rude materials, sometimes of untanned leather. Carpatince. 



S. VI. SATIRES. 113 

Nor list he now go whistling to the car, 

But sells his team and fettleth 109 to the war. 

O war ! to them that never tried thee, sweet ! 

When his dead mate falls groveling at his feet, 

And angry bullets whistlen at his ear, 

And his dim eyes see nought but death and drere. 

Oh happy ploughman ! were thy weal well known : 

Oh happy all estates except his own ! 

Some drunken rhymer thinks his time well spent, 

I If he can live to see his name in print ; 

~ Who when he is once fleshed to the press, 
And sees his hansell have such fair success, 
Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the pail 110 , 
He sends forth thraves m of ballads to the sale. 



109 To fettle is to go intently upon any business. Its origin 
is not known, but it seems to me to have the appearance of a 
corruption of to settle, as Mr. Nares has also observed. He 
has adduced another instance of its use from Sylvester : 

They to their long hard journey fettling them. 

Maiden s Blush. 

110 By c Sung unto the wheel, and to the pail,' he means, 
sung by the maids when spinning and milking. Lord Surrey 
says : 

My mother's maids, when they do sit and spin, 
They sing a song made of a fieldish mouse. 

Shakspeare, in Twelfth Night, says of a ballad, 
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun 
Do use to chant it. 

111 Thraves or thr eaves, Djaeap, Saxon, were a collection 
of sheaves of corn, some say two, others four, shocks of six 
sheaves each. It was often used metaphorically for a great 
number or huge collection of other objects. In the curious 
list of "The companyes of bestys and foules" in the Book of 



114 hall's B. IV. 

Nor then can rest, but volumes up bodg'd rhymes , 
To have his name talk'd of in future times. 
The brain-sick youth that feeds his tickled ear 
With sweet-sauc'd lies of some false traveller, 



St. Alban's, ed. 1486, " a thrave of thrashers" is humorously 
put for a company or number of thrashers ; because a thrave 
of straw was a heap of bundles ; and thraves here has the 
same humorous effect of ludicrous exaggeration. 

These lines seem to be levelled at William Elderton, a 
celebrated drunken ballad-writer. Stowe says he was an 
attorney of the Sheriff's Court, in the City of London, and 
cites some verses he made on the images over the Guildhall 
gate. He was afterward master of a company of players. 
Nash, in his Apology of Pierce Pennilesse, says : " Tarleton 
at the Theater, made jests of him (speaking of Gabriel Har- 
vey), and W. Elderton consumed his ale-crammed nose to 
nothing in baiting him with whole bundles of ballads." Ed. 
1593, Sig. E. Gabriel Harvey had drawn down his vengeance 
by mentioning him irreverently in his Four Letters, 1592. " If 
Mother Hubbard, in the vaine of Chaucer, happen to tell one 
canicular tale, Father Elderton and his son Greene, in the vaine 
of Skelton or Scoggin, will counterfeit an hundred dogged 
fables and libels," &c. p. 7 ; and in p. 6, he says, Elderton 
and Greene are the "ringleaders of the rhyming and scrib- 
bling crew." And again, " Who like Elderton for ballad- 
ing, Greene for pamphleting ; both for good fellowship and 
bad conditions? Railing was the ypocras of the drunken 
rhymester." " Elderton (says Camden), who did arme him- 
selfe with ale (as ould father Ennius did with wine) when he 
ballated, had this [Epitaph] in that respect made of him. 

Hie situs est sitiens ebrius Eldertonus 
Quid dico hie situs est? hie potius situs est. 

Of him also was made this : 

Here is Elderton lyeng in dust, 

Or lyeng Elderton, choose which you lust : 

Here he lies dead, I doe him no wrong; 

For who knew him standing all his life long?" 

Camden s Remaines, 1657, p. 397. 



S. VI. SATIRES. 115 

Which hath the Spanish decades 112 read awhile, 

Or whetstone leasings of old Mandeville ; 

Now with discourses breaks his midnight sleep, 

Of his adventures through the Indian deep, 

Of all their massy heaps of golden mine, 

Or of the antique tombs of Palestine ; 

Or of Damascus' magic wall of glass, 

Of Solomon his sweating piles of brass, 

Of the bird Rue that bears an elephant, 

Of mermaids that the southern seas do haunt; 

112 The ' Spanish Decades' is an old black letter quarto, 
a translation from the Spanish into English about 1590. In 
the old play of Lingua, 1607, Mendacio says, " Sir John 
Mandevile's Travels, and great part of the Decads were of 
my doing." Act ii. Sc. 1. W. 

To give the whetstone as a prize for lying was a standing 
jest among our ancestors, as a satirical premium to him who 
told the greatest lie. The origin of the jest has not been 
exactly made out, but perhaps it was with the idea of sharp- 
ening the wits for fresh exploits. Mr. Nares, to whom I 
am indebted for this explanation, cites a passage from 
Randolph's interlude of the Pedlar in proof of this ; Baret 
and Cooper, in their Dictionaries, interpret the ■ Fungar vice 
cotis' of Horace, " I will quicken or sharpen you, I will be 
a whetstone to you." And in Bullein's Dialogue bothe plea- 
sant and pitiful, &c. 1564, Mendax, the liar, who relates 
many such strange wonders as those in the text, brings a 
whetstone in his hand and says, "My name is Mendax, a 
younger brother, lineally descended of an ancient house be- 
fore the conquest. We give three whetstones in gules, with 
no difference." Many other allusions to it are to be found 
in our old writers, which the curious reader may see in the 
Glossary of Mr. Nares. It is remarkable that it is not yet 
out of use in the north. " Jt is a custom in the north, when 
a man tells the greatest lie in the company, to reward him 
with a whetstone." 

BudwortJis Fortnight's Ramble to the Lakes, 1792. 



116 hall's B. IV. 

Of headless men, of savage cannibals 113 , 
The fashions of their lives and governals : 
What monstrous cities there erected be, 
Cayro, or the city of the Trinity. 
Now are they dunghill cocks that have not seen 
The bordering Alps, or else the neighbour Ehene ; 

113 The reader will recollect Othello's 

" « cannibals that each other eat, 

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders." — 

A curious passage in another work of Hall's may be adduced 
here to show the wonders related by the traveller of that age, 
who probably met with numerous and believing readers ; as 
one dissuasive to travel, he says, " Let him but travell through 
the world of bookes, and hee shall easily be able to out-talke 
that tongue whose feet have walked the farthest ; what hath 
an eye seene, or imagination devised, which the pen hath not 
dared to write? Out of our bookes can we tell the stories 
of the Monocelli, who, lying upon their backes, shelter them- 
selves from the sunne with the shadow of their one onely 
foote. We can tell of those cheape dieted men, that live 
about the head of Ganges, without meat, without mouthes, 
feeding onely upon aire at their nosthrils. Or of those head- 
lesse Eastern people, that have their eyes in their breasts (a 
mis-conceit arising from their fashion of attire, which I have 
sometimes seene). Or of those Coromandae, of whom Pliny 
speakes, that cover their whole body with their eares. Or of 
the persecutors of S, Thomas, of Canterbury, whose poste- 
rity (if webeleeve the confident writings of Degrasalius) are 
born with long and hairie tails, souping after them ; which, I 
imagine, gave occasion to that proverbial jest, wherewith our 
mirth uses to upbraid the Kentish. Or of the Amazons, or 
Pygmees, or Satyres, or the Sarmacandean lambe, which 
growing out of the earth by the navell, grazeth so far as that 
natural tether will reach. Or of the bird Rue, or ten thou- 
sand such miracles, whether of nature or event. Little need 
we to stirre our feete to learne to tell either loud lies or large 
truths." — Quo Vadis? or, a Censure of Travel, p. 37. 



S. VI. SATIRES. 117 

And now he plies the news-full grasshopper 114 ? 
Of voyages and ventures to inquire. 
His land mortgag'd, he sea-beat in the way, 
Wishes for home a thousand sithes 115 a day. 

114 ' The news-full grasshopper,' i. e. the Royal Exchange, 
the steeple of which was surmounted by a grasshopper, the 
crest of Sir Thomas Gresham. It was a place of resort for 
newsmongers and idlers as well as the busy. Hall himself 
remarks, " So may we oft times better heare and see the 
newes of France, or Spaine, upon our Exchange, than in their 
Paris or Madrill." And in the Letting of Humours Blood in 
the Head Vaine, by S. R. 1611, Satire the first, we have a 
portrait of one of the swaggering, lying news venders who 
were to be found there : 

Sometimes into the Reall Exchange he'll drop, 
Clad in the ruins of some broker's shop. 
And there his tongue runs byass on affairs, 
No talk but of commodities and wares — 
If news be hearken'd for, then he prevails, 
Setting his mint to work to coin false tales. — 
He'll tell you of a tree that he doth know, 
Upon the which rapiers and daggers grow, 
As good as any Fleet Street hath in shop, 
Which being ripe, down into scabbards drop. — 
His wondrous travels challenge such renown, 
That Sir John Mandeville is o.uite put down. 
Men without heads, and pigmies handbreadth high, 
Those with no legs, that on their backs do lie; 
Or do the weather's injury sustain, 
Making their legs a pent-house for the rain. 
This curious little volume was reprinted by Sir Walter Scott 
in 1815. 

115 A thousand sillies, that is, a thousand times. The Ox- 
ford Editor has changed this to sighs, but unwarrantably. 
It is a Spenserian word : 

The foolish man thereat woxe wondrous blith, 
As if the word so spoken were halfe donne, 
And humbly thanked him a thousand sith 
That had from death to life him newly wonne. 

Faerie Queene, b. iii. c. 10, s. xxxiii. 



113 hall's B. IV. 

And now he deems his home-bred fare as leefe ll6 
As his parch'd biskit, or his barrei'd beef. 
Mongst all these ^tirs of discontented strife, 
Oh let me lead an academic life ; 
To know much, and to think we nothing know ; 
Nothing to have, yet think we have enow ; 
In skill to want and wanting seek for more ; 
In weal nor want, nor wish for greater store. 
Envy, ye monarchs, with your proud excess, 
At our low sail, and our high happiness. 

So in Bevis of Hampton : 

Of his coraming the King was blith, 
And rejoyced a hundredth sith." 

Thus also in a ballad in Ritson's Ancient Songs, p. 44 : 

I thonke you all a thousand sithe. 

116 As leefe is the same thing with as leive, i. e. as agree- 
able, as pleasing ; from Leop, Saxon, v. p. 61. 



SATIRES. 119 

SATIRE VH^. 

POMH PYMH. 

Who says these Romish pageants been too high 
To be the scorn of sportful poesy ? 
Certes not all the world such matter wist 
As are the seven hills, for a satirist. 
Perdie I loath a hundred Matho's tongues, 
A hundred gamesters shifts, or landlord's wrongs, 
Or Labeo's poems, or base Lolio's pride, 
Or ever what I thought or wrote beside. 
When once I think if carping Aquine's spright 
To see now Rome, were licens'd to the light, 
How his enraged ghost would stamp and stare, 
That Caesar's throne is turn'd to Peter's chair. 



117 This satire (which was added in the second Edition) 
attacks the pageantries of the papal chair, and the supersti- 
tious practices of popery, with which it is easy to make 
sport. But our author has done this by an uncommon quick- 
ness of allusion, poignancy of ridicule, and fertility of bur- 
lesque invention. He pictures to us the effect which the 
change between Modern and Ancient Rome would have on 
the enraged ghost of Juvenal, if he were permitted to return 
to earth to witness it. He makes very free with the cere- 
monies of the eucharist, &c. But this sort of ridicule is im- 
proper and dangerous. It has a tendency, even without an 
entire parity of circumstances, to burlesque the celebration 
of this awful solemnity in the reformed church. In laughing 
at false religion we may sometimes hurt the true. Though 
the rites of the papistic eucharist are erroneous and absurd, 
yet great part of the ceremony, and above all, the radical 
idea, belong to the protestant communion. W. 



120 hall's B. IV. 

To see an old shorn Lozel 118 perched high, 

Crossing beneath a golden canopy ; 

The whiles a thousand hairless crowns crouch low 

To kiss the precious case of his proud toe ; 

And for the lordly Fasces born of old, 

To see two quiet crossed keys of gold, 

Or Cybele's shrine, the famous Pantheon's frame, 

Turn'd to the honour of our Lady's name. 

But that he most would gaze and wonder at, 

Is th' horned mitre, and the bloody hat 119 , 

The crooked staff 120 , their cowl's strange form 

and store 121 . 
Save that he saw the same in hell before ; 
To see the broken nuns, with new-shorn heads, 
In a blind cloister toss their idle beads, 
Or lousy cowls come smoking from the stews, 
To raise the lewd rent to their lord accrues, 
(Who with rank Venice doth his pomp advance 
By trading of ten thousand courtesans) 
Yet backward must absolve a female's sin, 
Like to a false dissembling Theatine, 
Who when his skin is red with shirts of mail, 
And rugged hair-cloth scours his greasy nail ; 
Or wedding garment tames his stubborn back, 
Which his hemp girdle dyes all blue and black. 

118 Lozel, a worthless fellow, one lost to all goodness : 
from the Saxon lopan, to perish, or be lost. 

119 The Cardinal's scarlet hat. 120 The crozier. 
121 And store, i. e. and multitude of them. 



S. VII. SATIRES. 121 

Or off his alms-bowl three days supp'd and din'd, 

Trudges to open stews of either kind: 

Or takes some cardinal's stable in the way, 

And with some pamper'd mule doth wear the day, 

Kept for his lord's own saddle when him list. 

Come Valentine, and play the satirist, 

To see poor sucklings welcomed to the light 

With searing irons of some sour jacobite, 

Or golden offers of an aged fool, 

To make his coffin some Franciscan's cowl ; 

To see the pope's black knight, a cloked frere, 

Sweating in the channel like a scavenger. 

Whom erst thy bowed ham did lowly greet, 

When at the corner-cross thou didst him meet, 

Tumbling his rosaries hanging at his belt, 

Or his berretta, or his towi ed felt 122 : 

To see a lazy dumb Acholithite 123 

Armed against a devout fly's despight, 

Which at th' high altar doth the chalice veil 

With a broad fly-flap of a peacock's tail, 

The whiles the licorous priest spits every trice 

With longing for his morning sacrifice, 



122 The berretta and the high felt cap were worn by dif- 
ferent orders of priests. 

123 Ako\ov9oq, Acolythus. The next in grade to a sab- 
deacon in the Catholic Chnrch. "Acolyte (says Philips), 
one that is forbidden to say Divine service, yet may bring 
the light and attend Mass." It appears from a passage in 

. Durandus. Divin. Offic. 1. ii. c. 7, cited by Spelman, that 
one of the offices of an A colyte was the administration of the 
wine in the eucharistic ceremony. 

G 



122 hall's satires. b. iv. 

Which he rears up quite perpendicular, 
That the mid church doth spight the chancel's fare, 
Beating their empty maws that would be fed 
With the scant morsels of the sacrists' bread : 
Would he not laugh to death when he should hear 
The shameless legends of St. Christopher, 
St. George, the Sleepers, or St. Peter's well, 
Or of his daughter good St. Petronell ? 
But had he heard the female father's groan, 
Yeaning in mids of her procession ; 
Or now should see the needless trial-chair, 
(When each is proved by his bastard heir) 
Or saw the churches, and new calendar 
Pester'd with mongrel saints and relics dear, 
Should he cry out on Codro's tedious tomes m 
When his new ras ;e would ask no narrower rooms ? 



124 This is spelt toomes in the old edition, and the modern 
editor altered it to toombes. The allusion is to the tedious 
poetry of Codrus, the Theseide Codri of Juvenal. 

In the copy of the edition of 1599 (formerly Mr. Park's), 
which I have used upon the present occasion, this satire is 
placed at the end, as the second of the sixth book. But there 
is a reference in the errata which directs it to be placed as 
Sat. vii. B. 4, This errata is prefaced thus : " After this 
impression was finished, upon the Author's knowledge, I had 
the view of a more perfect copy, wherein were these addi- 
tions and corrections, which I thought good to place here, 
desiring the reader to refer them to their places." The addi- 
tions are ; — this Satire ; — what is called " A postscript to 
the reader ;" and two lines omitted in Sat. ii. B. 4. 



SATIRES. 



BOOK V 



G2 



BOOK V. 



SATIRE I 1 . 

Sit paena merenti. 

Pardon, ye glowing ears ; needs will it out, 
Tho' brazen walls compass'd my tongue about 
As thick as wealthy Scrobio's quick- set rows 
In the wide common that he did enclose. 
Pull out mine eyes, if I shall see no vice, 
Or let me see it with detesting eyes. 
Renowned Aquine, now I follow thee, 
Far as I may for fear of jeopardy ; 

1 The argument of this first satire of the Fifth Book is the 
oppressive exaction of landlords, the consequence of the grow- 
ing decrease of the value of money. One of these had, per- 
haps, a poor grandsire, who grew rich by availing himself of 
the general rapine at the dissolution of monasteries. There 
is great pleasantry in the line 

Begg'd a cast abbey in the church's wane. 

In the meantime, the old patrimonial mansion is desolated ; 
and even the parish church unroofed and dilapidated through 
the poverty of the inhabitants, and neglect or poverty of the 
patron. By an enumeration of real circumstances, he gives 
us a lively draught of the miserable tenement yet ample ser- 
vices of the poor copyholder. The lord's acceptance of his 
presents is touched with much humour. W. 



126 HALl/S B. V. 

And to thy hand yield up the ivy-mace 
From crabbed Persius, and more smooth Horace; 
Or from that shrew the Roman poetess, 
That taught her gossips learned bitterness ; 
Or Lucile's muse whom thou didst imitate, 
Or Menips old, or Pasquillers of late. 
Yet name I not Mutius, or Tigilline, 
Though they deserve a keener style than mine ; 
Nor mean to ransack up the quiet grave ; 
Nor burn dead bones, as he example gave : 
I tax the living ; let dead ashes rest, 
Whose faults are dead, and nailed in their chest, 
Who can refrain that's guiltless of their crime, 
Whiles yet he lives in such a cruel time ? 
When Titio's grounds, that in his grandsire's days 
But one pound fine, one penny rent did raise, 
A summer snow-ball, or a winter rose, 
Is grown to thousands as the world now goes. 
So thrift and time set other things on float, 
That now his son swoops 2 in a silken coat, 
Whose grandsire, haply a poor hungry swain, 
Begg'd some cast abbey in the church's wane : 
And but for that, whatever he may vaunt, 
Who now's a monk had been a mendicant ? 
While freezing Matho, that for one lean fee 
Wont term each term the term of Hilary, 
May now instead of those his simple fees, 
Get the fee-simples of fair manories. 

2 i. e. sweeps along. See p. 10, and note there. 



S. I. SATIRES. 127 

What, did he counterfeit his prince's hand, 

For some streave 3 lordship of concealed land ? 

Or on each Michael and Lady Day, 

Took he deep forfeits for an hour's delay? 

And gain'd no less, by such injurious brawl, 

Than Gamius by his sixth wife's burial? 

Or hath he won some wider interest, 

By hoary charters from his grandsire's chest, 

Which late some bribed scribe for slender wage, 

Writ in the characters of another age, 

That Ployden's self might stammer to rehearse, 

Whose date o'erlooks three centuries of years. 

Who ever yet the tracts of weal so try'd, 

But there hath been one beaten way beside? 

He, when he lets a lease for life, or years, 

(As never he doth until the date expires ; 

For when the full state in his fist doth lie, 

He may take vantage of the vacancy) 

His fine affords so many trebled pounds 

As he agreeth years to lease his grounds : 

His rent in fair respondence must arise 

To double trebles of his one year's price. 

Of one bay's 4 breadth, God wot! a silly cote, 

Whose thatched spars are furr'd with sluttish soot 

3 In the first edition it is printed brave, but erased with a 
pen and streav inserted in the margin, in cotemporary hand- 
writing. The second edition reads streave, which should 
seem to mean stray,. possibly from the old Italian straviart* 
I have not met with the word elsewhere. 

4 A bay is a principal division in a building ; a barn of 



128 hall's b. v. 

A whole inch thick, shining like black-moor's 

brows, 
Through smoke that down the headless barrel 

blows. 
At his bed's feet feeden his stalled teem ; 
His swine beneath, his pullen o'er the beam. 
A starved tenement, such as I guess 
Stands straggling in the wastes of Holderness ; 
Or such as shiver on a Peake-hill side, 
When March's lungs beat on their turf-clad hide, 
Such as nice Lipsius would grudge to see 
Above his lodging in wild Westphalie ; 
Or as the Saxon king his court might make, 
When his sides plained of the neat-herd's cake 5 , 
Yet must he haunt his greedy landlord's hall 
With often presents at each festival : 
With crammed capon's every new-year's morn, 
Or with green cheeses when his sheep are shorn : 
Or many maunds full of his mellow fruit, 
To make some way to win his weighty suit. 
Whom cannot gifts at last cause to relent, 
Or to win favour, or flee punishment? 
When griple patrons turn their sturdy steel 
To wax, when they the golden flame do feel : 

three bays is a barn twice crossed by beams. Houses were 
estimated by the number of bays they contained. Coles de- 
fines a bay to measure 24 feet. It was, therefore, a wretched 
cottage with a headless barrel for a chimney. 

5 Alluding to the story related of King Alfred the Great. 



S. I. SATIRES. 129 

When grand Maecenas casts a glavering 6 eye 
On the cold present of a poesy : 
And lest he might more frankly take than give, 
Gropes for a French crown in his empty sleeve. 
Thence Clodius hopes to set his shoulders free 
From the light burden of his napery 7 , 
The smiling landlord shows a sunshine face, 
Feigning that he will grant him further grace, 
And leer's like iEsop's fox upon a crane 
Whose neck he craves for his chirurgian : 
So lingers off the lease until the last, 
What recks he then of pains or promise past ? 
Was ever feather, or fond woman's mind, 
More light than words? the blasts of idle wind ! 
What's sib 8 or sire, to take the gentle slip, 
And in th' exchequer rot for suretiship ? 

6 To glaver is to flatter; Ulipan, Saxon. Glavering here 
means leering, ogling, i. e. flattering by looks. " Do you 
hear stiff-toe, give him warning to forsake his sawcy glaver- 
ing grace and his goggle eye." 

Jousojis Poetaster, Act iii. Sc. 4. 

So Marston, in his sixth satire of his Scourge for Villanie . 

" Ha ! now he glavers with his fawning snoute." 
And in another place : 

" Leave glavering on him in the peopled presse :" 

Examples from more recent authorities may be found in 
Todd's Johnson. 

7 Napery is here used for clothes, linen worn on the per- 
son ; but its general meaning was household or table linen. 
From Naperie, old French. 

8 Sib is a cousin, or kinsman. Saxon. 

G 3 



130 hall's b. v. 

Or thence thy starved brother live and die, 
Within the cold Coal-harbour sanctuary 9 ? 
Will one from Scots-bank bid but one groat more, 
My old tenant may be turn'd out of door, 
Though much he spent in th' rotten roof's repair, 
In hope to have it left unto his heir : 
Though many a load of marie and manure laid, 
Reviv'd his barren leas, that erst lay dead. 
Were he as Furius, he would defy 
Such pilfering slips of petty landlordry : 
And might dislodge whole colonies of poor, 
And lay their roof quite level with their floor, 
Whiles yet he gives as to a yielding fence, 
Their bag and baggage to his citizens, 



9 Coal Harbour , or Cold Harbour, was an ancient mansion 
in Dowgate Ward, London. It was the residence of Bishop 
Tunstal, in the reign of Henry VIII, when probably it ob- 
tained the privileges of a sanctuary. These were still re- 
tained, when small tenements were afterward built upon the 
spot, which let well, as being a protection to persons in 
debt. " Here is that that ancient model of Coal Harbour, bear- 
ing the name of the Prodigal's Promontorie, and being as a 
sanctuary for banque-rupt detters." 

Healy's Discovery of a Neiv World, p. 182. 

Stowe gives a minute history of this place in his Survey of 
London ; and Mr. Lodge, in his Illustrations of English His- 
tory, vol. i. p. 9, says, that " Richard the III. granted it for 
ever to the Herald's College, who had lately received their 
Charter from him ; and Henry VII., willing to annul every 
public act of his predecessor, gave it to the then Earl of 
.Shrewsbury. " — It was pulled down by Earl Gilbert about the 
year 1600, according to Mr. Lodge, but I should judge rather 
earlier, from the above allusion. 



S. I. SATIRES. 131 

And ships them to the new-named Virgin-lond, 
Or wilder Wales, where never wight yet wonn'd 10 . 
Would it not vex thee where thy sires did keep, 
To see the dunged folds of dag-tail'd sheep ? 
And ruin'd house where holy things were said, 
Whose free- stone walls the thatched roof upbraid, 
Whose shrill saint's-bell hangs on his lovery u . 
While the rest are damned to the plumbery ? 
Yet pure devotion lets the steeple stand, 
And idle battlements on either hand : 
Lest that, perhaps, were all those relics gone, 
Furius his sacrilege could not be known. 

10 Wonn'd t i. e. dwelt. 

11 A Lover, or Loover, was a tunnel or opening in the top 
of a great hall to avoid smoke. Hence the turret or small 
belfry is so called by Hall. The bells were all melted down 
and sold ; except that for necessary use, the Saint's-bell, or 
Sanctus-beli, was suffered to remain. It was a small bell 
which called to prayers and other holy offices ; called also 
Saunce-bell and Sac ring -bell. 



132 hall's b. v. 

SATIRE II 12 . 

Heic quaerite Trojam. 

Housekeeping's dead, Saturio, wot'st thou 

where ? 
Forsooth they say far hence in Brecknockshire. 
And ever since, they say that feel and taste, 
That men may break their neck soon as their fast. 
Certes, if pity dy'd at Chaucer's date 13 , 
He hVd a widower long behind his mate : 
Save that I see some rotten bedrid sire, 
Which to outstrip the nonage of his heir, 
Is cramm'd with golden broths, and drugs of price, 
And each day dying lives, and living dies ; 
Till once surviv'd his wardship's latest eve, 
His eyes are clos'd, with choice to die or live. 

12 In this satire he reprehends the incongruity of splendid 
edifices and worthless inhabitants. He beautifully draws, 
and with a selection of the most picturesque natural circum- 
stances, the inhospitality, or rather desertion of an old mag- 
nificent mansion. W. 

13 Chaucer places the sepulchre of Pity in the Court of 
Love : 

A tender creature 

Is shrinid there, and Pity is her name ; 

She saw an egle reek him on a flie, 

And plucke his wing, and eke him in his game, 

And tender harte of that hath made her die. 

Court of Love, v. 700. 
This thought is borrowed by Fenton in his Mariamne. W. 



S. II. SATIRES. 133 

Plenty and He died both in that same year, 

When the sad sky did shed so many a tear, 

And now, who list not of his labour fail, 

Mark, with Saturio, my friendly tale. 

Along thy way thou canst not but descry 

Fair glittering halls to tempt the hopeful eye, 

Thy right eye 'gins to leap for vain delight, 

And surbeat 14 toes to tickle at the sight; 

As greedy T^mm^when in the sounding mould 

He finds a shining potshard tip'd with gold ; 

For never siren tempts the pleased ears, 

As these the eye of fainting passengers. 

All is not so that seems, for surely then 

Matrona should not be a courtesan ; 

Smooth Chrysalus should not be rich with fraud, 

Nor honest R be his own wife's bawd. 

Look not asquint, nor stride across the way 
Like some demurring Aicide to delay ; 
But walk on cheerly, till thou have espied 
St. Peter's finger at the churchyard side. 
But wilt thou needs when thou art warn'd so well 
Go see who in such garish walls doth dwell ? 
There findest thou some stately Doric frame, 

Or neat Ionic work: — 

Like the vain bubble of Iberian pride, 
That over-croweth all the world beside 15 . 

14 Surheat, i. e. battered, galled, or weary with treading 
or walking. Souhattu, French. So Spenser, F. Q. II. ii, 22. 

Espy a traveller with feete surbet, 
Whom they in equal prev hope to divide. 

15 The Escurial, in Spain. 



134 hall's b. v. 

Which rear'd to raise the crazy monarch's fame, 

Strives for a court and for a college name ; 

Yet nought within but lousy cowls doth hold, 

Like a scabb'd cuckow in a cage of gold. 

So pride above doth shade the shame below ; 

A golden periwig on a black-moor's brow. 

When Maevio's first page of his poesy, 

NaiFd to a hundred posts for novelty, 

With his big title, an Italian mot 16 , 

Lays siege unto the backward buyer's groat; 

Which all within is drafty, sluttish geere, 

Fit for the oven or the kitchen fire. 

So this gay gate adds fuel to thy thought, 

That such proud piles were never rais'd for nought. 

Beat the broad gates, a goodly hollow sound, 

With double echoes doth again rebound ; 

But not a dog doth bark to welcome thee, 

Nor churlish porter canst thou chafing see ; 

All dumb and silent, like the dead of night, 

Or dwelling of some sleepy Sybarite. 

The marble pavement hid with desert weed, 

With houseleek, thistle, dock, and hemlock 

seed: 
But if thou chance cast up thy wond'ring eyes, 
Thou shalt discern upon the frontispiece 



16 It was fashionable to haye sounding and imposing title- 
pages, with Italian mottos and devices, to the pamphlets of 
the lime. It is not easy to saj which, among the numerous 
rhymers of the day, is here pointed at. 



S. II. SATIRES. 135 

OYAEIS EISITQ 17 graven up on high, 
A fragment of old Plato's poesy : 
The meaning is, " Sir fool, ye may be gone, 
Go back by leave, for way here lieth none. 
Look to the tow'red chimneys which should be 
The windpipes of good hospitality, 
Through which it breathe th to the open air, 
Betokening life, and liberal welfare ; 
Lo ! there th' unthankful swallow takes her rest, 
And fills the tunnel with her circled nest; 
Nor half that smoke from all his chimneys goes 
Which one tobacco-pipe drives through his nose. 
So raw-bone hunger scorns the mudded walls, 
And 'gins to revel it in lordly halls. 
So the black prince 18 is broken loose again 
That saw no sun save once (as stories saine) 
That once was, when in Trinacry I ween, 
He stole the daughter of the harvest queen, 
And gript the maws of barren Sicily 
With long constraint of pineful penury ; 
And they that should resist his second rage, 
Have pent themselves up in the private cage 
Of some blind lane, and there they lurk unknown 
Till th' hungry tempest once be overblown : 
Then like the coward after neighbour's fray, 
They creep forth boldly, and ask, Where are they ? 

17 This motto, on the front of the house, which he calls a 
fragment of Plato's poetry, is a humorous alteration of Plato's 
0YAEI2 AKAGAPT02 EI2IT0. W. 

18 The Prince of Darkness : Pluto, or the Devil. 



136 hall's b. v. 

Meanwhile the hunger- star v'd appurtenance 
Must bide the brunt, whatever ill mischance : 
Grim Famine sits in their fore-pined face, 
All full of angles of unequal space, 
Like to the plane of many-sided squares, 
That wont be drawn out by geometers ; 
So sharp and meagre that who should them see 
Would swear they lately came from Hungary. 
When their brass pans and winter coverled 
Have wip'd the manger of the horse's bread, 
Oh me! what odds there seemeth 'twixt their 

cheer 
And the sworn bezzle 19 at an alehouse fire, 
That tuns in gallons to his bursten paunch, 
Whose slimy draughts his drought can never 

stanch ? 
For shame, ye gallants ! grow more hospital, 
And turn your needless wardrobe to your hall. 
As lavish Virro that keeps open doors, 

Like Janus in the wars, 

Except the twelve days, or the wake-day feast, 
What time he needs must be his cousin's guest. 
Philene hath bid him, can he choose but come ? 
Who should pull Virro's sleeve to stay at home ? 
All year besides who meal-time can attend : 
Come Trebius, welcome to the table's end. 



19 Bezzle is here pot for a drunkard ; to bezzle, or bizzle, 
was to drink to excess. Marston also calls a drunkard, foule 
drunken bezzle, and sots are also called bezelers by him. 



S. II. SATIRES. 137 

What tho' he chires 20 on purer manchet's crown, 

While his kind client 21 grinds on black and brown, 

A jolly rounding of a whole foot broad, 

From off the rnong-corn 22 heap shall Trebius load. 

What tho' he quaff pure amber in his bowl 

Of March-brew'd wheat, yet slakes thy thirsting 

soul 
With palish oat, frothing in Boston clay 23 , 
Or in a shallow cruise, nor must that stay 
Within thy reach, for fear of thy craz'd brain, 
But call and crave, and have thy cruise again : 

20 To chire. Mr. Nares seems to think this may be the 
same as to chirre, or chirp, as birds do ; bat it appears to me 
nothing more than a varied orthography of to cheer, to feast 
upon. Speaking of bread, Holinshed says : " The first and 
most excellent is the mainchet, which we commonly call 
white bread." 

21 Client then signified a dependent, or humble friend. 

22 Mong-corn, Bol-mong, Mastlin, Messlin, &c. a medley 
of different sorts of grain mixed together, sometimes as food 
for cattle, but often for the purpose of grinding into flour to 
make bread. Rye and wheat were a common mixture for 
household bread. It is the mixed grain which was called 
Mong-corn, Mastlin, &c. but Hall uses Mong-corn heap for 
the huge, brown, coarse loaf made of the mixture. Old Tus- 
ser in homely phrase describes the advantage, in point of 
quantity, by using Mastline for bread. The humble guest is 
treated with a round, a foot broad, off this coarse loaf. 

"The tone is commended for graine, 

Yet bread made of beans they do eat : 

Tbe tother for one loaf has twain, 

Of mastline of rie and of wheat." — Tusser, chap. iii. 

23 ~[Y]i ea f was used in brewing the ale of our ancestors ; 
and oats even were sometimes used instead of malt: it ap- 
pears that the small beer brewed from oats was not in great 
repute. Clay and even lime were used by fraudulent brewers 
to give a head to their beer. Hall had before mentioned 
the brewer's scapes, or tricks. 



138 HALL'S B. V, 

Else how should even tale be registred, 
Or all thy draughts, on the chalk'd barrel's head? 
And if he list revive his heartless grain 
With some French grape, or pure Canarian, 
When pleasing Bourdeaux falls unto his lot, 
Some sourish Rochelle cuts thy thirsting throat. 
What though himself carveth his welcome friend 
With a cooPd pittance from his trencher's end, 
Must Trebius' lip hang toward his trencher side ? 
Nor kiss his fist to take what doth betide ? 
What tho' to spare thy teeth he employs thy tongue 
In busy questions all the dinner long? 
What tho' the scornful waiter looks askile 24 , 
And pouts and frowns, and curseth thee the while, 
And takes his farewell with a jealous eye, 
At every morsel he his last shall see ? 
And if but one exceed the common size, 
Or make an hillock in thy cheek arise, 
Or if perchance thou shouldest, ere thou wist 25 , 
Hold thy knife upright in thy griped fist, 
Or sittest double on thy backward seat, 
Or with thine elbow shad'st thy shared meat, 
He laughs thee, in his fellow's ear to scorn, 
And asks aloud, where Trebius was born ? 
Tho 26 the third sewer takes thee quite away 
Without a staff, when thou wouldst longer stay, 
What of all this ? Is't not enough to say, 
I din'd at Virro his own board to day ? 

24 i. e. askew; aslant; obliquely. 

25 Wist; thought, or imagined. 26 Tho, for then. 



SATIRES. 139 

SATIRE III. 

KOINA *IAQN* 

The satire should be like the porcupine 2 ", 
That shoots sharp quills out in each angry line, 
And wounds the blushing cheek and fiery eye, 
Of him that hears, and readeth guiltily. 
Ye antique satires, how I bless your days, 
That brook'd your bolder style, their own dispraise, 
And well near wish, yet joy 28 my wish is vain, 
I had been then, or they were now again ! 
For now our ears been of more brittle mould, 
Than those dull earthen ears that were of old : 
Sith 29 theirs, like anvils, bore the hammer's head, 
Our glass can never touch unshivered. 
But from the ashes of my quiet style 
Henceforth may rise some raging rough Lucile, 
That may with iEschylus both find and leese 30 
The snaky tresses of th ? Eumenides : 
Meanwhile, sufficeth me, the world may say 
That I these vices loath'd another day, 

27 This ingenious thought, though founded on a vulgar 
error, has been copied bj Oldham ; who, speaking of a true 
writer of satire, says : 

"He'd shoot his quills just like a porcupine 
At view, and make them stab in every line/' 

28 Joy, i. e. rejoice. 29 Sith, i. e. since. 
30 Leese. i. e, lose. 



140 hall's b. v. 

Which I have done with as devout a cheer 

As he that rounds Poules pillars in the ear 31 , 

Or bends his ham down in the naked quire. 

'Twas ever said, Frontine, and ever seen, 

That golden clerks but wooden lawyers been. 

Could ever wise man wish, in good estate, 

The use of all things indiscriminate ? 

Who wots not yet how well this did beseem 

The learned master of the academe ? 

Plato is dead, and dead is his device, 

Which some thought witty , none thought ever wise, 

Yet certes Maecha is a Platonist 

To all, they say, save who so do not list; 

Because her husband, a far-traffic'd man, 

Is a profess'd Peripatecian. 

And so our grandsires were in ages past, 

That let their lands lie all so widely waste, 

That nothing was in pale or hedge ypent 

Within some province or whole shire's extent. 

As nature made the earth, so did it lie, 

Save for the furrows of their husbandry ; 

Whenas the neighbour-lands so couched lain 

That all bore show of one fair champian : 

31 The humour of this line was quite lost upon the Oxford 
editor who printed it erroneously : 

" As he that rounds Poul's pillars in the yeareJ" 
To round here means to whisper. Poules is the cathedral of 
St. Paul's, constantly so called by ancient writers. It is a 
ludicrous way of describing one who mutters his prayers, to 
say, that he whispers the church pillars in the ear. How the 
rounding, or going round, the pillars once in the year could 
be taken for an act of devotion by the modern editor I can- 
not imagine. 



S. III. SATIRES. 141 

Some headless cross they digged on their lea, 
Or roll'd some marked mere-stone 32 in the way. 
Poor simple men ! for what mought that avail, 
That my field might not fill my neighbour's pail. 
More than a pilled stick can stand in stead, 
To bar Cynedo from his neighbour's bed ; 
More than the threadbare client's poverty 
Debars the attorney of his wonted fee ? 
If they were thriftless, mought not we amend, 
And with more care our dangered fields defend ? 
Each man can guard what thing he deemeth dear, 
As fearful merchants do their female heir, 
Which (were it not for promise of their wealth) 
Need not be stalled up for fear of stealth ; 
Would 33 rather stick upon the bellman's cries, 
Tho' proffer'd for a branded Indian's price. 
Then raise we muddy bulwarks on our banks, 
Beset around with treble quickset ranks ; 
Or if those walls be overweak a ward, 
The squared brick may be a better guard. 
Go to, my thrifty yeomen, and uprear 
A brazen wall to shend thy land from fear. 
Do so ; and I shall praise thee all the while, 
So be thou stake not up the common style ; 
So be thou hedge in nought but what's thine own ; 
So be thou pay what tithes thy neighbours done 34 ; 

32 Mere-stone, terminalis lapis, a stone set to mark a boun- 
dary, a landmark, a mere being a boundary. 

33 But would, &c. But, must be understood. 

34 Done for doon, or do. 



142 hall's b. v. 

So be thou let not lie in fallow'd plain 
That which was wont yield usury of grain. 
But when I see thy pitched stakes do stand 
On thy encroached piece of common land, 
Whiles thou discommonest thy neighbour's kine, 
And warn'st that none feed on thy field save thine ; 
Brag no more, Scrobius, of thy mudded banks, 
Nor thy deep ditches, nor three quickset ranks. 
O happy days of old Deucalion, 
When one was landlord of the world alone ! 
But now, whose choler would not rise ? to yield 
A peasant half-stakes of his new-mown field, 
Whiles yet he may not for the treble price 
Buy out the remnant of his royalties ? 
Go on and thrive, my petty tyrant's pride, 
Scorn thou to live, if others live beside ; 
And trace 35 proud Castile that aspires to be 
In his old age a young fifth monarchy : 
Or the red hat that tries the luckless main, 
For wealthy Thames to change his lowly Rhene. 

35 Trace, i. e. follow. I will here just observe by the way, 
that the commentators have sadly mistified a passage in 
Othello, by substituting trash for trace, which is the reading 
of the folio ; the word is used exactly in the sense in which 
it here stands. Iago, speaking of Roderigo, says : 

"If this poor trash of Venice whom I trace (i.e. follow) 
For his quick hunting, bear the putting on," &c. 
The fact is, that to trace, originally a hunting term, signifies 
* to follow the track of an animal.' The old French tracer, 
tracker, trasser ; and the Italian tracciare, have the same 
meaning. 



SATIRES. 143 

SATIRE IV 36 . 

Possunt, quia posse videntur. 

Villi us, the wealthy farmer, left his heir 
Twice twenty sterling pounds to spend by year : 
The neighbours praisen VilhVs hidebound son, 
And say it was a goodly portion. 
Not knowing how some merchants dow'r can rise, 
By Sunday's tale to fifty centuries 37 ; 
Or to weigh down a leaden bride with gold, 
Worth all that Matho bought, or Pontice sold. 
But whiles ten pound goes to his wife's new gown. 
Nor little less can serve to suit his own ; 
Whiles one piece pays her idle waiting man, 
Or buys an hood, or silver-handled fan 38 , 

36 In this satire he enumerates the extravagances of a mar- 
ried spendthrift, a farmer's heir of forty pounds a year. W. 

37 By Sunday's tale to fifty centuries. The meaning, 
though obscurely expressed, appears to be, that the enor- 
mous portions which some merchants can leave their children 
would arise, by a reckoning (tale), made on Sundays (as a 
day of leisure for such a long process) to fifty hundred (cen- 
turies), or £5000 by the year ; an enormous dower indeed 
for those times. 

38 The fans of the ancient belies were not at all in the 
shape of the implement now used under the same name, but 
more like a hand screen. They had round handles, often of 
silver or other precious materials ; the upper part was gene- 
rally composed of feathers. They were often very costly 
even as high as £40. Delineations of several may be seen 



144 hall's satires. b. v. 

Or hires a Friezeland trotter, half yard deep, 

To drag his tumbrell 39 through the staring Cheap ; 

Or whiles he rideth with two liveries, 

And's treble rated at the subsidies ; 

One end a kennel keeps of thriftless hounds ; 

What think ye rests of all my yonker's pounds 

To diet him, or deal out at his door, 

To coffer up, or stock his wasting store ? 

If then I reckon'd right, it should appear 

That forty pounds serve not the farmer's heir. 

in the Variorum edition of Shakspeare, in a note on The 
Merry Wives of Windsor. Tom Corvat describes the Ita- 
lian fans apparently such as are now used, but they were 
quite a novelty to him. 

39 A tumbrel properly signified a clang cart, but Hall humo- 
rously calls the farmer's son's carriage, whatever it was, bv 
that name. It was, perhaps, a low four wheeled carriage. 
His Friesland poney, half a yard high, is another ludicrous 
piece of exaggeration. 



SATIRES. 



book vr. 



BOOK VI. 
SATIRE I'. 

Seme! insanivimus. 

Labeo reserves a long nail for the nonce, 

To wound my margent thro' ten leaves at once, 

Much worse than Aristarchus his black pile 

That pierc'd old Homer's side; 

And makes such faces that meseems I see 
Some foul Megaera in the tragedy, 
Threat'ning her twined snakes at Tantale's ghost, 
Or the grim visage of some frowning post 

1 The last book, consisting of one long satire only, is a sort 
of Epilogue to the whole, and contains a humorous ironical 
description of the effect of his Satires, and a recapitulatory 
view of many of the characters and foibles which he had be- 
fore delineated. But the scribblers seem to have their chief 
share. The character of Labeo, already repeatedly men- 
tioned, who was some cotemporary poet, a constant censurer 
of our author, and who from pastoral proceeded to heroic 
poetry, is here more distinctly represented. He was a wri- 
ter who affected compound epithets, which Sir Philip Sidney 
had imported from France, and first used in his Arcadia. W. 

Mr. Warton thought the character, in many respects, suit- 
ed Chapman, though he does not appear to have written any 
pastorals ; but it seems to me more probable that Drayton 
was meant. It is difficult, at this distance of lime, to appro- 
priate satirical delineations of character so lightly sketched. 
If the author is to be believed, his satire was not personal 
but general. 

H 2 



148 halls' b. vi. 

The crabtree porter of the Guildhall gates ; 

While he his frightful beetle elevates, 

His angry eyne look all so glaring bright, 

Like th' hunted badger in a moonless night : 

Or like a painted staring Saracen ; 

His cheeks change hue like th' air-fed vermin's 

skin 2 , 
Now red, now pale, and swoln above his eyes 
Like to the old Colossian imageries. 
But when he doth of my recanting hear, 
Away,, ye angry fires, and frosts of fear, 
Give place unto his hopeful temper'd thought 
That yields to peace, ere ever peace be sought : 
Then let me now repent me of my rage 
For writing satires in so righteous age. 
Whereas I should have strok'd her tow'rdly head, 
And cry'd evcee in my satires' stead; 
Sith now not one of thousand does amiss, 
Was never age I ween so pure as this. 
As pure as old Labulla from the baynes 3 , 
As pure as throngh-fare channels when it rains ; 
As pure as is a black-moor's face by night, 
As dung-clad skin of dying Heraclite. 
Seek over all the world, and tell me where 
Thou find'st a proud man, or a flatterer • 
A thief, a drunkard, or a parricide, 
A lecher, liar, or what vice beside ? 

2 The chameleon. 

3 The baynes, i. e. the baths. 



S. I. SATIRES. 149 

Merchants are no whit covetous of late, 
Nor make no mart of time, gain of deceit. 
Patrons are honest now, o'er they of old, 
Can now no benefice be bought or sold ? 
Give him a gelding, or some two years tithe, 
For he all bribes and simony defi'th. 
Is not one pick- thank 4 stirring in the court, 
That seld was free till now, by all report. 
But some one, like a claw-back parasite,, 
Pick'd mothes from his master's cloak in sight, 
Whiles he could pick out both his eyes for need, 
Mought they but stand him in some better stead 5 . 
Nor now no more smell-feast Vitellio 
Smiles on his master for a meal or two, 
And loves him in his maw, loathes in his heart, 
Yet sooth's, and yea's, and nay's on either part. 
Tattelius, the new-come traveller, 
With his disguised coat and ringed ear, 
Trampling the bourse's marble 6 twice a day, 
Tells nothing but stark truths, I dare well say; 

4 Pickthank, a flatterer, a person who is studious to gain 
favour, or to pick occasions for obtaining thanks. 

5 This line is omitted in the first edition, but is supplied in 
MS. by a coteniporary hand in my copy. 

6 The bourse s marble is the Royal Exchange, now newly 
erected. It appears to have been as much frequented by 
hungry walkers as St. Pauls. See before, p. 62. In Hay- 
man's Quodlibets, 1628, p. 6, we have the following epigram 
To Sir Pierce Pennilesse : 

Though little coin thy purseless pockets line, 
Yet with great company thou'rt taken up ; 
For often with Duke Hurafray thou dost dine, 
And often with Sir Thomas Gresham sup. 



150 HALLS B. VI. 

Nor would he have them known for any things 
Tho' all the vault of his loud murmur ring. 
Not one man tells a lie of all the year, 
Except the Almanack or the Chronicler. 
But not a man of all the damned crew, 
For hills of °:old would swear the tiling untrue. 
Pansophus now, though all in the cold sweat, 
Dares venture through the feared castle- gate, 
Albe the faithful oracles have forsaine, 
The wisest senator shall there be slain : 
That made him long keep home as well it might, 
Till now he hopeth of some wiser wight. 
The vale of Stand- gate, or the S liter's hill, 
Or western plain are free from feared ill. 
Let him that hath nought fear nought, I areed : 
But he that hath aught hie him, and God speed. 
Nor drunken Dennis doth, by break of day, 
Stumble into blind taverns by the way, 
And reel me homeward at the ev'ning star, 
Or ride more eas'ly in his neighbour's char. 
Well might these checks have fitted former times, 
? And shoulder 'd angry Skelton's breathless 
rhymes 7 . 

7 Skelton's verses are well characterized by this epithet, 
they are, indeed, breathless rhymes, for nothing can be more 
tiresome to the ear than the quick recurrence of /the rhyme in 
the short measure which he used ; a paragraph will some- 
times occupy several verses, so as to give no pause to the 
reader or reciter. Puttenham has thus described him : 
"Such were the rimes of Skelton, being indeed but a rude 
rayling rimer, and all his doings ridiculous ; he used both 
short distaunces and short measures, pleasing only the popu- 



S. I. SATIRES. 151 

Ere Chrysalus had barr'd the common box, 
Which erst he pick'd to store his private stocks ; 
But now hath all with vantage paid again, 
And locks and plates what doth behind remain ; 
When erst our dry-soul'd sires so lavish were, 
To charge whole boots-full to their friends welfare 8 ; 
Now shalt thou never see the salt 9 beset 
With a big-bellied gallon flagonet. 
Of an ebb cruise 10 must thirsty Silen sip, 
That's all forestalled by his upper lip ; 
Somewhat it was that made his paunch so peare n , 
His girdle fell ten inches in £ year. 
Or when old gouty bed-rid Euclio 
To his officious factor fair could show, 

lar eare." — Arte of English Poesie, 1589, p. 69. Yet when 
he chose to depart from his light skipping- style, he has some- 
times shown himself not destitute of poetical imagination, 
and capable of spirited and picturesque personification. 

8 The ancient carouse was indeed drinking deep ; it was 
necessary, in doing complete justice to a pledge, to empty the 
capacious vessel at a draught. To drink a boot full of liquor 
may have been a particular act of drunken gallantry, for there 
was a Dane in London at that time, named Keynaldo, " who 
would carouse out of his boot." Marston asks what a tra- 
veller brings from Holland : 

" From Belgia what, but their deep bezzeling, 

Their boot-carouse, and their beer buttering." — Sat. it. 

9 The reader will see an account of the Salt at p. 41, ante. 

10 An ebb-cruise is a vessel half empty, in which the liquor 
stood at ebb, or very low. 

11 Peare. I have not been fortunate enough to find this 
word elsevvhere. It is apparently used in the sense of spare, 
for which word I should have supposed it a typographical 
error but for the rhyme. 



152 hall's b. vi. 

His name in margent of some old cast bill, 
And say, Lo ! whom I named in my will, 
Whiles he believes, and looking for the share 
Tendeth his cumbrous charge with busy care 
For but a while ; for now he sure will die, 
By his strange qualm of liberality. 
Great thanks he gives — " but God him shield and 

save 
From ever gaining by his master's grave, 
Only live long and he is well repaid :" — 
And wets his forced cheeks while thus he said ; 
Some strong-smelPd onion shall stir his eyes 
Rather than no salt tears shall then arise. 
So looks he like a marble toward rain, 
And wrings and snites, and weeps, and wipes 

again : 
Then turns his back and smiles, and looks askance, 
Seas'ning again his sorrowed countenance ; 
Whiles yet he wearies heav'n with daily cries, 
And backward death with devout sacrifice, 
That they would now his tedious ghost bereaven, 
And wishes well, that wish'd no worse than heaven. 
When Zoylus was sick, he knew not where, 
Save his wrought night-cap , and lawn pillowbear 12 . 



12 Davies has an Epigram which turns upon this piece of 
ridiculous vanity: 

Brumus, which deemes hiraselfe a faire sweet youth, 
Is thirty-nine yeares of age at least ; 
Yet was he never, to confesse the truth, 
But a dry starv'ling when he was at best ; 



S. I. SATIRES. 153 

Kind fools ! they made him sick that made him fine ; 
Take those away, and there's his medicine. 
Or Gellia wore a velvet mastic-patch 
Upon her temples when no tooth did ach 13 ; 
When beauty was her rheum I soon espied, 
Nor could her plaster cure her of her pride. 
These vices were, but now they ceas'd of long : 
Then why did I a righteous age that wrong ? 
I would repent me were it not too late, 
Were not the angry world prejudicate. 
If all the seven penitential 14 , 
Or thousand white-wands might me aught avail ; 
If Trent or Thames could scour my foul offence, 
And set me in my former innocence, 
I would at last repent me of my rage : 
Now, bear my wrong, I thine, O righteous age. 
As for fine wits, a hundred thousand fold 
Passeth our age whatever times of old. 
For in that puisne world, our sires of long 15 
Could hardly wag their too unwieldy tongue 

This gull was sicke, to show his night-cap fine, 
And his wrought pillow, over-spread with lawne, 
But hath bin well since his griefes cause hath line 
At Trollup's, by Saint Clement's Church, in pawne. 

13 Here is another proof that ache was not pronounced alee, 
as is now the case. Hall does not, however, follow Baret's 
dictum, who makes ache the substantive, and alee the verb. 

14 That is the seven penitential psalms. The white wands, • 
in the next line, have reference to doing the act of penance in 

a church, by being wrapt in a sheet or white garment, and 
bearing a white wand in the hand. 

15 Of long, i, e. for a long period of time. 

H 3 



154 K ALL ? S B. VI. 

As pined crows and parrots can do now, 
When hoary age did bend their wrinkled brow : 
And now of late did many a learned man 
Serve thirty years prent'ship with Priscian ; 
But now can every novice speak with ease 
The far-fetch'd language of th' Antipodes. 
Wouldst thou the tongues that erst were learned 

hi ght, 
Tho our wise age hath wip'd them of their right : 
Wouldst thou the courtly three in most request 16 , 
Or the two barbarous neighbours of the West ? 
Bibinus self can have ten tongues in one, 
Though in all ten not one good tongue alone. 
And can deep skill lie smothering within, 
Whiles neither smoke nor flame discerned bin ? 
Shall it not be a wild-fig ir in a wall, 
Or fired brimstone in a minerall ? 
Do thou disdain, O ever-learned age ! 
The tongue-tied silence of that Samian sage : 
Forth, ye fine wits, and rush into the press, 
And for the cloyed world your works address. 
Is not a gnat, nor fly, nor seely ant, 
But a fine wit can make an elephant. 

16 In that age three modern languages were studied to af- 
fectation. In the Return from Parnassus, 1606, A fashion- 
able fop tells his page, " Sirrah, boy, remember me when I 
come in Paul's Church-yard, to buy a Ronsard and Dubartas 
in French; an Aretine in Italian; and our hardest writers 
in Spanish. W. 

17 Wild-jig is the reading of both the old editions. I sus- 
pect that the Wild-fire, or Greek-fire, as it is called by old 
writers is meant. See Blount's Glossography. 



S. I. SATIRES. loo 

Should Bandell's throstle die without a soiio*, 
Or Adaniantius' dog, be laid along 18 , 
Down in some ditch without his exequies, 
Or epitaphs, or mournful elegies ? 
Folly itself, and Baldness may be prais'd 19 , 
And sweet conceits from filthy objects rais'd. 
What do not fine wits dare to undertake ? 
What dare not fine wits do for honour's sake ? 
But why doth Balbus his dead-doing quill 
Parch in his rusty scabbard all the while ; 



18 Poems on petty subjects or occasions, on the death of a 
favourite bird or dog seem to have been as common in Hall's 
time as at a later period. In the old comedy, The Return 
from Parnassus, we are told of a coxcomb who could bear no 
poetry — "but fly-blown sonnets to his mistress and her lov- 
ing pretty creatures, her monkey and her parrot." 

19 The allusion is to Erasmus's Morice Encomium, and the 
Encomium Calvitiei, written about the same period. A co- 
temporary of Hall's has enumerated some of the subjects that 
have been thus sported with : 

Ovid his Nux, the Culex Virgil writ : 

Erasmus did in Folly dye his wit. 

The Frog-fight Homer made, and of Dame Mouse, 

And Janus Dousa prais'd Pediculus. 

Hubaldus on Bald-men did versifie 

Each of whose numbers' words began with C. 

Beza prais'd Nihil,. Apaleihs tJi Asse, 

Plutarch Grillus, who by Circe changed was. 

A Quartan Ague Favorine did commend ; 

His darling Sparroiv so Catullus pen'd. 

The Opticke Glasse of Humors, 1606. 
Epistle to the Reader. 

" Sweet conceits from filthy objects" probably refers to Ha- 
rington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, to which Hall has other 
allusions. 



156 HALL S B. VI. 

His golden fleece o'ergrown with mouldy hoar 

As though he had his witty works forswore ? 

Belike of late now Balbus hath no need, 

Nor now belike his shrinking shoulders dread 

The catch-poll's fist — The press may still remain 

And breathe, till Balbus be in debt again. 

Scon may that be ! so I had silent been, 

And not thus rak'd up quiet crimes unseen. 

Silence is safe, when saying stirreth sore 

And makes the stirred puddle stink the more. 

Shall the controller of proud Nemesis 

In lawless rage upbraid each other's vice, 

While no man seeketh to reflect the wrong, 

And curb the range of his misruly tongue ? 

By the two crowns of Parnass evergreen, 

And by the cloven head of Hippocrene 

As I true poet am, I here avow 

(So solemnly kiss'd he his laurel bough) 

If that bold satire unrevenged be 

For this so saucy and foul injury 

So Labeo weens it my eternal shame 

To prove I never earn'd a poet's name. 

But would I be a poet if I might, 

To rub my brows three days and wake three nights, 

And bite my nails, and scratch my dullard head, 

And curse the backward Muses on my bed 

About one peevish syllable; which outsought 

I take up Thales' joy 20 , save for forethought 

20 Thales" joy. The allusion is to the ecstasy of the Greek 
philosopher on discovering how to detect the quantity of brass 



S. I. SATIRES. 157 

How it shall please each ale-knight's censuring 

eye, 
And hang'd my head for fear them deem awry : 
Whiles threadbare Martiall turns his merry note 
To beg of Rufus a cast winter-coat ; 
Whiles hungry Marot leapeth at a bean, 
And dieth like a starved Capuchin ; 
Go, Ariost 21 , and gape for what may fall 
From trencher of a flattering cardinal ; 
And if thou gettest but a pedant's fee, 
Thy bed, thy board, and coarser livery, 
O honour far beyond a brazen shrine, 
To sit with Tarleton 22 on an ale-post's sign ! 
Who had but lived in Augustus' days, 
*T had been some honour to be crown'd with bays ; 
When Lucan streaked on his marble bed 
To think of Caesar, and great Pompey's deed: 



mixed with the gold in making a crown by a fraudulent gold- 
smith ; or, in other words, on discovering the mode of ascer- 
taining the specific gravity of bodies by weighing them in 
water. The story is usually told of Archimedes. I know 
not on what authority Hall attributes it to Thales. It is said 
that being in a bath when he observed it, in the madness of 
his joy he ran out into the streets naked, crying out, Eureka, 
eureka, I have found it, I have found it. 

21 Alluding to Ariosto's dependence on the Cardinal Hip- 
polito d'Este. 

22 Meres commends Tarleton, the player, for his facility in 
extempore versification. — Wits' Treasury, fol. 286. Mr. 
Warton enumerates several of his publications chiefly of the 
humorous cast and ballad form. — Hist, of Poetry, vol. iv* 
,p. 48. 



158 hall's » b. vi. 

Or when Achelaus shav'd his mourning head, 
Soon as he heard Stesichorus was dead. 
At least, would some good body of the rest 
Set a gold pen on their bay-wreathed crest; 
Or would their face in stamped coin express, 
As did the Mytelenes their poetess. 
Nov/ as it is, beshrew him if he might, 
That would his brows with Caesar's laurel dight. 
Though what aiFd me, I might not well as they 
Rake up some forworn tales that smother'd lay 
In chimney corners smok'd with winter fires, 
To read and rock asleep our drowsy sires ? 
No man his threshold better knows, than I 
Brute's first arrival, and first victory ; 
St. George's sorrel, or his cross of blood, 
Arthur's round board, or Caledonian wood, 
Or holy battles of bold Charlemain, 
What were his knights did Salem's siege maintain : 
How the mad rival of fair Angelice 
Was physic'd from the new-found paradise. 
High stories they, which with their swelling strain 
Have riven Fronto's broad rehearsal plain. 
But so to fill up books, both back and side, 
What needs it? Are there not enow beside? 
O age well thriven and well fortunate, 
When each man hath a muse appropriate ; 
And she, like to some servile ear-bor'd slave 
Must play and sing when and what he would have ! 

Would that were all small fault in number lies, 

Were not the fear from whence it should arise. 



S. I. SATIRES. 159 

But can it be aught but a spurious seed 

That grows so rife in such unlikely speed ? 

Sith Pontian left his barren wife at home, 

And spent two years at Venice and at Home, 

Returned, hears his blessing ask'd of three, 

Cries out, O Julian law ! adultery ! 

Tho Labeo reaches right (who can deny ?) 

The true strains of heroic poesy; 

For he can tell how fury reft his sense, 

And Phoebus fill'd him with intelligence. 

He can implore the heathen deities 

To guide his bold and busy enterprise ; 

Or filch whole pages at a clap for need ~ 

From honest Petrarch, clad in English weed : 

While big hut otis! each stanza can begin, 

Whose trunk and tail sluttish and heartless been. 

He knows the grace of that new elegance, 

Which sweet Philisides 23 fetch; d of late from 

France, 
That well beseem'd his high-sty I'd Arcady, 
Tho' others mar it with much liberty, 



23 Philisides. One of the poetical names of Sir Philip Sid- 
ney, evidently formed from portions of the two names, Philip 
and Sidney. The name appears to have been invented by 
himself, for we have the lad Philisides in the Arcadia, B. iii, 
Eclogue the 3d. He is almost always distinguished by this 
name among his poetical cotemporaries. Thus in verses pre- 
fixed to Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, by E. Heyward : 

" Numbers, curious ears to please, 
Learn'd he of Philisides." 



160 hall's b. vi. 

In epithets to join two words in one 
Forsooth, for adjectives can't stand alone 24 : 
As a great poet could of Bacchus say, . 
That he was Semele-femori-gena. 
Lastly he names the spirit of Astrophel; 
Now hath not Labeo done wrondrous well ? 
But ere his Muse her weapon learn to wield, 
Or dance a sober pirrhique 25 in the field, 
Or marching wade in blood up to the knees, 
Her arma virum goes by two degrees, 
The sheep-cote first hath been her nursery, 
Where she hath worn her idle infancy, 
And in high startups 26 walk'd the pastur'd plains, 
To tend her tasked herd that there remains, 
And winded still a pipe of oat or breare, 
Striving for wages who the praise shall bear ; 
As did whilere the homely Carmelite, 
Following Virgil, and he Theocrite 27 ; 

24 The arts of composition must have been much practised, 
and a knowledge of critical niceties widel v diffused, when ob- 
servations of this kind could be written. W. 

25 The Pyrrhic dance, performed in armour. 

26 Startups were a kind of rustic high shoes, sometimes 
also called bagging shoes. In Junius's Noraenclator, by 
Fleming, Pero is rendered a country shooe: a startop : a 
high shooe. The Soccus of the ancients is also rendered in 
the old Dictionaries, " A kind of bagging shoes, or manner 
of startups, that men and women did use in times passed, a 
socke." Chapman uses startups in this sense in his Hymn 
to Cynthia, 1595. 

27 Though these lines bear a general sense, yet at the same 
time they seem to be connected with the character of Labeo, 



S. L SATIRES. 161 

Or else hath been in Venus chamber train'd 

To play with Cupid, till she had attain'd 

To comment well upon a beauteous face, 

Then was she fit for an heroic place. 

As witty Pontan 28 in great earnest said, 

His mistress' breasts were like two weights of lead. 

Another thinks her teeth might liken'd be 

To two fair ranks of pales of ivory, 

To fence in sure the wild beast of her tongue, 

From either going far, or going wrong; 

Her grinders like two chalk-stones in a mill, 

Which shall with time and wearing wax as ill 

As old Catilla's, which wont every night 

Lay up her holy pegs till next daylight, 

And with them grind soft- simpering all the day, 

When lest her laughter'should her gums bewray 

Her hands must hide her mouth if she but smile ; 

Fain would she seem all frixe and frolic still. 

Her forehead fair is like a brazen hill 

Whose wrinkled furrows which her age doth 

breed, 
Are daubed full of Venice chalk for need : 

by which they are introduced. By the Carmelite, a pastoral 
writer ranked witb Theocritus and Virgil, he means Man- 
iuanus. W. 

28 (< p 0D t all) h ere mentioned/' says Mr. Warton, " I pre- 
sume is Joannis Jovianus Pontanus, an elegant Latin amato- 
rial poet of Italy at the revival of learning." This I very 
much doubt; at least, I have not found the simile after a 
pretty diligent search for it in the Poems of Pontanus, printed 
by Aldus, at Venice, 1518. It is more probable that Hall 
iiere ridicules one of his cotemporaries. 



162 HALL S SATIRES. B. VI. 

Her eyes like silver saucers fair beset 
With shining amber, and with shady jet, 
Her lids like Cupid's bow-case, where he hides 
The weapons that doth wound the wanton-ey'd : 
Her chin like Pindus, or Parnassus' hill, 
Where down descends th' overflowing stream doth 

fill 
The well of her fair mouth. — Each hath his 

praise. 
Who would not but wed poets now-a-days ! 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 



BY 



BISHOP HALL. 



ANTHEMS. 



FOR THE CATHEDRAL OF EXETER. 

Lord, what am I? A worm, dust, vapour, no- 
thing ! 
What is my life ? A dream, a daily dying f 
What is my flesh ? my soul's uneasy clothing ! 
What is my time ? A minute ever flying : 
My time, my flesh, my life, and I; 
What are we, Lord, but vanity ? 

Where am I, Lord ? down in a vale of death : 
What is my trade ? sin, my dear God offend- 
ing ; 
My sport sin too, my stay a puff* of breath : 
What end of sin? Hell's horror never ending : 
My way, my trade, sport, stay, and place 
Help to make up my doleful case. 

Lord, what art thou? pure life, power, beauty, 
bliss : 
Where dwellest thou ? above in perfect light : 
What is thy time ? eternity it is : 

What state ? attendance of each glorious spright ; 
Thyself, thy place, thy days, thy state 
Pass all the thoughts of powers create. 



166 hall's 

How shall I reach thee, Lord ! Oh, soar above, 
Ambitious soul: but which way should I fly? 
Thou, Lord, art way and end : what wings have I ? 
Aspiring thoughts, of faith, of hope, of love : 
Oh, let these wings, that way alone 
Present me to thy blissful throne. 



? 



FOR CHRISTMAS DAY. 

Immortal Babe, who this dear day 
Didst change thine Heaven for our clay, 
And didst with flesh thy godhead veil, 
Eternal Son of G od, all hail ! 

Shine, happy star; ye angels, sing 

Glory on high to Heaven's King : 

Run, shepherds, leave your nightly watch, 

See Heaven come down to Bethlehem's cratch. 

Worship, ye sages of the east, 

The King of gods in meanness dress'd. 

O blessed maid, smile and adore 

The God thy womb and arms have bore. 

Star, angels, shepherds, and wild sages, 
Thou virgin glory of all ages, 
Restored frame of Heaven and Earth, 
Joy in your dear Redeemer's birth ! 



POEMS. 167 



Leave, O my soul, this baser world below, 

O leave this doleful dungeon of woe, 

And soar aloft to that supernal rest 

That maketh all the saints and angels bless'd : 

Lo, there the Godhead's radiant throne, 

Like to ten thousand suns in one ! 

Lo, there thy Saviour dear, in glory dight, 
Ador'd of all the powers of Heaven's bright : 
Lo, where that head that bled with thorny wound 
Shines ever with celestial honour crown'd : 
That hand that held the scornful reed 
Makes all the fiends infernal dread. 

That back and side that ran with bloody streams 
Daunt angels' eyes with their majestic beams; 
Those feet, once fastened to the cursed tree, 
Trample on Death and Hell, in glorious glee. 
Those lips, once drench'd with gall, do make 
With their dread doom the world to quake. 

Behold those joys thou never canst behold; 
Those precious gates of pearl, those streets of 

gold, 
Those streams of life, those trees of Paradise 
That never can be seen by mortal eyes : 

And when thou seest this state divine, 

Think that it is or shall be thine. 



168 hall's 

See there the happy troops of purest sprights 
That live above in endless true delights ; 
And see where once thyself shalt ranged be, 
And look and long for immortality : 

And now beforehand help to sing 

Hallelujahs to Heaven's King. 



ON 

MR. GREENHAM'S BOOK OF THE SABBATH. 

While Greenham writeth on the Sabbath's rest, 
His soul enjoys not what his pen express'd: 
His work enjoys not what itself doth say, 
For it shall never find one resting day. 
A thousand hands shall toss each page and line, 
Which shall be scanned by a thousand eine ; 
That Sabbath's rest, or the Sabbath's unrest, 
Hard is to say whether's the happiest. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 169 



ELEGY ON DR. WHITAKER 1 . 

Bind ye my brows with mourning cyparisse, 
And palish twigs of deadly poplar tree, 

Or if some sadder shades ye can devise, 

Those sadder shades veil my light-loathing eye ; 

I loathe the laurel bands I loved best, 

And all that maketh mirth and pleasant rest. 

If ever breath dissolv'd the world to tears, 
Or hollow cries made Heaven's vault resound : 

If ever shrieks were sounded out so clear, 
That all the worldis waste might hear around : 

Be mine the breath, the tears, the shrieks, the 
cries, 

Yet still my grief unseen, unsounded lies. 

Thou flattering Sun, that ledst this loathed light, 
Why didst thou in thy saffron-robes arise ? 

Or fold'st not up the day in dreary night ? 

And wak'st the western world's amazed eyes? 

And never more rise from the ocean, 

To wake the morn, or chase night-shades again. 

1 King's professor, and master of St. John's College, Cam- 
bridge ; he died in 1595. The Elegy was annexed to the 
Carmen Funebre Caroli Horni, 1596. 

I 



170 hall's 

Hear we no bird of day, or dawning morn, 
To greet the Sun, or glad the waking ear : 

Sing out, ye screech-owls, louder then aforn, 
And ravens black of night ; of death of drear : 

And all ye barking fowls yet never seen, 

That fill the moonless night with hideous din. 

Now shall the wanton devils dance in rings 
In every mead, and every heath hore : 

The Elvish Fairies, and the Gobelins : 
The hoofed Satyrs silent heretofore : 

Religion, Virtue, Muses, holy mirth 

Have now forsworn the late forsaken Earth. 

The Prince of Darkness 'gins to tyrannize, 
And rear up cruel trophies of his rage ; 

Faint Earth through her despairing cowardice 
Yields up herself to endless vassalage : 

What champion now shall tame the power of 
Hell, 

And the unruly spirits overqueil? 

The worldis praise, the pride of Nature's proof, 
Amaze of times, hope of our faded age : 

Religion's hold, Earth's choice, and Heaven's 
love, 
Pattern of virtue, patron of Muses sage : 

All these and more were Whitaker's alone, 

Now they in him, and he and all are gone. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 171 

Heaven, Earth, Nature, Death, and every Fate 
Thus spoil'd the careless world of wonted joy : 

Whiles each repin'd at others' pleasing state, 
And all agreed to work the world's annoy : 

Heaven strove with Earth, Destiny gave the 
doom, 

That Death should Earth and Nature overcome. 

Earth takes one part, when forced Nature sends 
The soul, to flit into the yielding sky : 

Sorted by Death into their fatal ends, 
Foreseen, foreset, from all eternity : 

Destiny by Death spoil'd feeble Nature's frame, 

Earth was despoil'd when Heaven overcame. 

Ah, coward Nature, and more cruel Death, 
Envying Heaven, and unworthy mould, 

Unwieldy carcass and unconstant breath, 
That did so lightly leave your living hold : 

How have ye all conspir'd our hopeless spite, 

And wrapt us up in Grief's eternal night. 

Base Nature yields, imperious Death commands, 
Heaven desires, durst lowly dust deny ? 

The Fates decreed, no mortal might withstand, 
The spirit leaves his load, and lets it lie. 

The senseless corpse corrupts in sweeter clay, 

And waits for worms to waste it quite away. 

I 2 



172 hall's 

Now 'gin your triumphs, Death and Destinies, 
And let the trembling world witness your 
waste : 

Now let black Orphney raise his ghastly neighs, 
And trample high, and hellish foam outcast : 

Shake he the Earth, and tear the hollow skies, 

That all may feel and fear your victories. 

And after your triumphant chariot, 

Drag the pale corpse that thus you did to die, 
To show what goodly conquests ye have got, 

To fright the world, and fill the wond'ring eye : 
Millions of lives, of deaths no conquests were, 
Compared with one only Whitaker. 

But thou, O soul, shalt laugh at their despite, 
Sitting beyond the mortal man's extent, 

All in the bosom of that blessed spright : 

Which the great God for thy safe conduct sent, 

He through the circling spheres taketh his flight, 

And cuts the solid sky with spiritual might. 

Open, ye golden gates of Paradise, 

Open ye wide unto a welcome ghost : 
Enter, O soul, into thy bow'r of bliss, 

Through all the throng of Heaven's host : 
Which shall with triumph guard thee as thou 

go'st 
With palms of conquest and with crowns of 
cost. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 173 

Seldom had ever soul such entertains, 

With such sweet hymns, and such a glorious 
crown. 

Nor with such joy amids the heavenly trains, 
Was ever led to his Creator's throne : 

There now he lives, and sees his Saviour's face, 

And ever sings sweet songs unto his grace. 

Meanwhile, the memory of his mighty name 
Shall live as long as aged Earth shall last : 

Enrolled on [the] beryl walls of fame, 

Aye ming'd, aye mourn'd ; and wished oft in 
waste. 

Is this to die, to live for evermore 

A double life : that never liv'd afore ? 



174 hall's 



The two following Poems, on the Death of 
Prince H.enry, were printed in " Lachrymze 
Lachrymarum ; or, The Spirit of Teares Dis- 
tilled for the untimely Death of the incom- 
parable Prince Panaretus, by Joshua Syl- 
vester." 

Upon the unseasonable times that have 
followed the unseasonable death of my 
sweet master Prince Henry. 

Fond Vulgar, canst thou think it strange to 

find 
So watery winter, and so wastefull ivind? 
What other face could Nature's age become, 
In looking on Great Henry's herse and tomb ? 
The world's whole frame his part in mourning 

bears : 
The icinds are sighs : the rain is Heaven's tears : 
And if these tears be rife, and sighs be strong, 
Such sighs, such tears, to these sad times belong. 
These show'rs have drown'd all hearts : these 

sighs did make 
The church, the world, with griefs, with fears to 

shake, 
Men's sighs and tears are slight, and quickly 

done, 

j. HALL. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 175 



THE RAINBOW, 

THAT WAS REPORTED TO BE SEEN IN THE NIGHT, 

OVER 

St. Sames, More tf>e prime's Dead) ; 

AND OF 

THE UNSEASONABLE WINTER SINCE. 

Was ever nightly rainbow seen? 

Did ever winter mourn in green ? 

Had that long bow been bent by day 

That chased all our clouds away ? 

But now that it by night appears, 

It tells the deluge of our tears. 

No marvel rainbows shine by night, 

When suns e'er noon do lose their light. 

Iris was wont to be, of old, 

Heaven's messenger to earthly mould ; 

And now she came to bring us down 

Sad news of Henry's better crown. 

And as the eastern star did tell 

The Persian sages of that cell 

Where Sion's King was born and lay ; 

And over that same house did stay : 

So did that western bow descry 

Where Henry, prince of men, should die : 



176 hall's miscellaneous poems. 

Lq there this arch of heavenly state 
Rais'd to the triumph of his fate ; 
Yet rais'd in dark of night to show 
His glory should be with our woe. 
And now, for that men's mourning weed 
Reports a grief not felt indeed ; 
The winter weeps, and mourns in deed, 
Though clothed in a summer weed. 

J. hall. 



GLOSSARIAL INDEX. 



Abron locks, 59. 
Ache, 153. 
Acolithite, 121. 
Acquite, 32. 
Angels, 87, 106. 
Appayre, 80. 
Apple-squire, 7, 77. 
As, 60. 
Askile, 138. 



Badgelesse-blue, 105. 
Balac'd, 105. 
Barnacle, 88. 
Bartolo, 30. 



Bay, 127. 

Baynes, 148. 
Beretta, 121. 
Bezzle, 136. 
Black Prince, 135. 
Blowen (blown), 108. 
Blowesse, 4. 
Boot (profit), 91. 
Boots full, of liquor, 

151. 
Boston clay, 137. 
Bourse's marble, 149. 
Brass bason, 79. 
Brown-paper, 108. 
Busks, 110. 



178 



GLOSSARIAL INDEX. 



Caitive, 87. 
Cales (Cadiz). 
Caravell, 61. 
Carle, 33. 
Carmelite, 161. 
Carpet-knights, 95. 
Carsey, 81. 
Chire, 137. 
Client, 137. 
Coaches, 112. 
Coal Harbour, 130. 
Cokers, 112. 

CoLLINGBORNE, 95. 

Collybist, 108. 
Corked-stilts, 111. 
Cotes, 26. 
Cot-quean, 111. 
Cvbeale, 81. 



Delicious, 49. 
Dight, 52. 
Ding-thrift, 106. 
Dining with DukeHum- 
phry, 62. 



Disclout, 31. 
Dole, 82. 
Done (do), 141. 



Ebb-cruise, 151. 
Elderton, 113. 



Fans, 98, 143. 
Fault, 6. 
Faulted, ciii. 
Fettle, 113. 
Forlore, 5. 
Forwent, 27. 
Fumy-ball, 99. 



Galloway, 93. 
Gaulard, 72. 
Girdle-stead, 103. 
Glavering, 129. 
Governall, 104. 
Grasshopper, 117. 
Gryllus, 29. 



GLOSSARIAL INDEX. 



179 



Haberdine, 97. Love-locks, 65. 

Hexameter-verse, 14. Lovery, 130. 
Holy-rood, 57. Lozel, 120. 

Lust, 70. 



Inhospitall, 107. 
Inkhorn-terms, 19. 
Intend, 72. 
Jargling, 99. 
Jennet, 92. 
Joy, 139. 
Jury-land, 93. 



Kendal Green, 112. 
Kernes, 104. 
Kestrel, ci. 



Lave- eared, 29. 
Laving, 75. 
Leese, 139. 
Libs, 39. 
Lief, 118. 
Lieve, 84, 



Manchet, 137. 
Martin's Eve, 97. 
Masking the miller's 

maze, 93. 
Maund, 81. 
Mazer, xcix. 
Mell, 17. 
Mere-stone, 141. 
Mew, 79. 
Minge, 84. 
Miniver, 86. 
Mong-corn, 137. 
Month's-mind, 101. 
Morkin, 57. 
Morrian, 100. 
Morocco, 85. 
Morphew, 104. 
Mould (mouldy), 108. 



180 



GLOSSARIAL INDEX. 



Napery, 129. 
Napkin, 111, 
Nice, 51. 



Ocland, 91. 
Of long, 153. 
Overly, 55, 



Pack-staff, 48. 
Painted posts, 88. 
Panes, 83. 
Pannel, 81. 
Parbrake, 13. 
Paris Garden, 75. 
Partlet-slips, 110. 
Paunched, 29. 
Peare, 151. 
Peevish, 51. 
Pestle, 97. 
Philisides, 159. 
Pick-thank, 149. 
Pight, 28. 
Pinnace, 92. 



Playse-mouth, 74. 

PoNTAN, 161. 

Privy-door, 100, 
Proking-spit, 99. 
Purchase, 28. 



Quinsing plovers (minc- 
ing), 82. 
Quintain, 100. 



Rath, 99. 
Reez'd, 81. 
Rife, 51. 
Rifely, 93. 
Rock, 111. 
Rogerian, 80. 
Round (rown), 140. 
Ruffs, 66. 
Russetings, 10. 



Safety, 51. 

Salt, below the, 37, 



GLOSSARIAL INDEX. 



181 



Scaffold of a Theatre, 

10. 
Scape, 50. 
Self (same), 73. 
Semones, 76. 
Shak-fork, 67. 
Shoreditch, 20. 
Shroud, 74. 
Sib, 129. 
Side-robes, 9. 
Simule, 81. 
Single-soled, 26. 
Si quis, 34. 
Sith (since), 139. 
Sithes (times), 117. 
Skelton, 151. 
Snout-fair, 77. 
Soords, 81. 

Spanish Decades, 115. 
Spanish-face, 84. 
Spils, 90. 
Startups, 160. 
Stewes, 6. 
Stile, 67. 
Store, 120. 
Stoures, 31. 



Streave, 127. 
Surbeat, 133. 
Sursingle, 112. 
Swooping, 9. 
Swoops, 126. 



Talus, 73. 
Tarleton, 157. 
Tavernings, 25. 
Teretismes, 71. 
Termagaunt, 3. 
Thales'-joy, 157. 
Tho (then), 31, 103. 
Thraves, 113. 
Toot, 82. 
Trace, 142. 
Traunt, 89. 
Truckle-bed, 36. 
Trunk-hose, 67. 
Tumbrel, 144. 



Verdingale, 110. 
Vie, 85. 



182 GLOSSARIAL INDEX. 

Wafts, 96. Wist, 138. 

Westy-head, 79. Wit-wal, or wittol, 16. 

Whetstone, to give the, Wonn'd, 130. 

115. Wot, 110. 

Wild-fig, 154. Writhen-withe, 97. 
Winging quails, 82. 



TERMS WANTING EXPLANATION. 

Grasse, to give, civ. Scot's bank, 130. 

Holyfax inquest, 72. St. Peter's finger, 133. 
Pampilian, 81. Th' Hand Congee, 84. 



FROM THE PRESS OF CHARLES WHITTINGHAM. 
M DCCC XXIV. 




LBJe*26 




0014 091 913 5 



